Reviews

This film had the potential to be one of the great ones if only someone had displayed the nous and courage to slash about 20 minutes from the first half.

As I watched the film at home I kept shouting. "Okay, guys, we've got the message, now move along to the next step in the story." But my shouts were in total vain and there came several points in the first half where I came within a whisker of giving up on it and finding something else more enjoyable to watch. It wasn't until we got to the first cafe scene that the story began to take off -- as take of it most certainly did.

Perhaps the problem for the director and the editors lay in the fact that much of it was a single, protracted shot. But they should have seen the need to delete some of the more repetitive sections.

Sadly this hugely amusing television series produced in Australia by Britain's Caroline Aherne was not given the promotion and recognition it deserved. Like all good comedy, characters were beautifully observed and touching. We thought it was consistently even funnier than The Royale Family, made by the BBC in Britain. Television channels should give it a second chance by running it again.

The astonishing thing about anything performed, written or produced by Aherne is that it is full of surprises. Who would have thought the repeated scenes in which Joe lovingly smooths down a piece of timber would be funny, but it most certainly was.

This is a great story, but dumbed down and splattered with dialogue and images that were a nonsense. The young actor playing the Nazi commandant's son Bruno indeed showed tremendous talent, but why was he asked to speak like an adult, rather than an eight-year-old? It was so unnecessary; so counter-productive. And how come that Shmuel, the Jewish kid in the concentration camp, was fatter than Bruno? How come the servant from the concentration camp looked better fed than the Nazi family? How come there was just a single, poorly constructed, non-electrified fence where Bruno and Shmuel met? How come there were never any guards patrolling the perimeter fence? How come in wartime did the commandant's wife have access to a seemingly endless supply of designer clothes? (And to nit-pick, where did Bruno get a modern-day, zip-up shirt?) And so the questions could go on. Not least how and why we are expected to believe how easy it would have been to penetrate the fence as the film moves towards its conclusion.

To be fair, the acting was mostly excellent, though I'd loved to have seen it made in German rather than English. And I am immensely relieved – and a little surprised – that there was no cop-out with the ending. But as for the rest… Oh dear.

Movies often require the suspension of disbelief – never more so than in, say, the James Bond flicks – but to undermine such a serious, important, compelling story with a contemptuous approach to so many realities was seriously disappointing. Shame on you, BBC Films. Shame on you, Miramax. Shame on you, writer-director Mark Herman.

Reading through some of the other reviews for In Bruges, I began to wonder if I had seen a different film.

The one my wife and I saw – on DVD – had a great story, but a story that was destroyed by over-wordy, heavy-handed and unfunny dialogue and a director who seemed unsure of what he wanted the film to be. Was it supposed to be farce? Perhaps a gentle comedy? Maybe a thriller with comedy overtones? Perhaps a black comedy? Who knows? At times we felt we were watching an episode of the British TV sitcom "Father Ted", but without the fun.

As I have already stated, it was a great story, but it needed two primary changes: A script-editor with a ruthless approach to dialogue and a director with a true sense of what the film should have been.

Finally, a thought: imagine what a wondrous film this would have been with the Coen Brothers at the helm.

Oh dear, what a disappointment! Many great films -- not least Westerns -- require the suspension of disbelief. But on this scale? How did this film attract so much enthusiasm when it was overwhelmed by visual and spoken clichés? And you certainly didn't have to be a soothsayer to predict what was going to happen next, scene by scene. How nice it would have been to be surprised, just once.

The film repeatedly pushed the boundaries of disbelief to breaking point. I mean, how did that guy manage to survive a stomach wound big enough to send a bull elephant to that great zoo in the sky? At this point, my wife turned to me and asked "Is this supposed to be a comedy?". Sadly, not -- at least not intentionally -- so she went off to do something more useful, muttering to herself "it must be a boy's thing".

For those exhilarated or disappointed by 3:10 to Yuma, I urge you to see the outstanding Aussie contribution to the western genre, "The Proposition". Now! There's a film for grown-ups and one that won't have you shouting "you must be joking!" at the screen.

158 minutes long – and for what? A quarter of the scenes could have been dropped because they took the story nowhere. Many of the remaining scenes applied the directorial maxim "go in late and come out early" to a destructive extreme. It was like being given clues to a cryptic crossword.

To be fair, the film started well. The first 20 minutes or so were acutely observed and well acted and directed, then it began going downhill with increasing speed.

It was no surprise to learn that the film is a cut-down version of a TV mini-series. I can only assume that the IMDb reviewers who enjoyed the film must have known of Janet Frame and her story. For those of us who knew neither, it was unexplained mystery piled on unexplained mystery.

It could be argued that a plus for the film was that it kept me watching to the end, but believe me, that was simply because I lived in (vain) hopes that all would suddenly be clarified with a satisfactory conclusion. But no. It just left me frustrated and deeply disappointed.

Talk, talk, talk, talk. That's all it was. Where was the action? I can't recall seeing a film that was less suited to its medium. If I had a better grasp of French, I am sure I would have been able to sit with my eyes closed, regarding it as a radio play. To add to this, the male lead, Serge Renka, lacked any real impact on screen and was dull, dull, dull. On the other hand, Katerina Didakalu was quite impressive, considering she had very little to bounce off. The more I think about this film, the lower I rate it as a movie. Other comments on the film indicate that some people thought highly of Triple Agent, but would they have been so impressed if it had been the work of someone less prestigious than Eric Rohmer? I think not.

A. Williams

Reading some through some of the reviews already posted, I began to wonder if my wife and I had seen an entirely different film called Little Fish. But no. Cate Blanchett was definitely in the one we saw. There she was, acting her little heart out with admirable skill and determination, but nothing could save the film from itself. It simply failed to engage.

The script was unnecessarily meandering and complex and didn't move the story on at a satisfying pace. There is definitely a story to be told on this theme, but it struck us as though the director had used an early script draft by mistake. If the script did go through the usual very necessary rewrite-after-rewrite development then one can only speculate about just how awful the first couple of drafts must have been.

Frankly, it is a dud that can best be summed up as "a film about losers who stay losers". And did we care? No, not one bit. Sorry guys!

Andy Williams

What a superb film. I hadn't heard of it until a director friend drew my attention to it. Though it might be regarded by some as a movie for young people, it is much more than that. There can hardly be a parent who doesn't identify with at least some of the problems so accurately, touchingly and acutely portrayed. I was much impressed by the way the director used simple, often brief, scenes to powerfully indicate a shift in character. In addition to the portrayal of a wonderful universal story, it also told us much about the social and economic problems of Germany following the re-unification.

A real shame the film hasn't had a wider audience. See it if you can.

I am glad that when I took out this DVD from my local video shop I was unaware that one of the central characters had dementia. Had I known the story I probably would have chosen something else -- thereby missing one of the finest films I have seen in recent years. A truly mature account of a family in crisis, nicely sprinkled with humour. Throughout, I kept thinking of what a ghastly, saccharine film it would have been if the average Hollywood producer had got his/her sticky hands on it. Argentina can be proud of this film. Congratulations on an elegant script, sensitive acting by all the on-screen cast and, above all, the focused and delicately sure-handed direction.

There's no denying that Sean Penn's contribution to this film was a tour de force, but it was also too much of a good thing. Two thirds of the way through I wanted to shout at the screen "Enough! We get the message". Which is a pity because there is so much merit in this film. Knowing a bit of the long and tortured history of the film, I wonder if the director, Niels Mueller, lost his sense of editorial detachment because he was so entranced by Penn's extraordinary acting skills and so grateful for the actor's loyal commitment to the project over so many years of ups and downs. I gave the film 6/10, but I bet that if it were cut down by 10-15 minutes, I would up my rating by a couple of points. For a start, it would remove the risk of the Penn character becoming a tiresome bore. Finally, congratulations to Don Cheadle and Naomi Watts for their rich performances and nice to see Jack Thompson back on top form -- even if his diet doesn't seem to be working!

I fail to see what the title had to do with the film, but that aside, Rain is a terrific tribute to the director, Christine Jeffs, and both the adult and actors. Right from the beginning, I could strongly sense the barren atmosphere of the location and the self-destructive behaviour of the adults. The acting of the girl/woman and her little brother was stunning, and credit must go to Christine Jeffs for ensuring that exactly the right tone was struck throughout. It so easily could have been a creepy Disney effort had the script not been so deftly performed and directed by such a skilled team. There could hardly be an adult watching this wonderful film who did not have their own childhood flooding back as they watched the girl/woman and her brother interact.

I made a special trip into London to see this film on its outing at the Raindance Film Festival. What a waste of a train fare and my time. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a film made in the 1950s but in the new millennium. The story had potential, but was delivered with such offensive heavy-handed "humor" that I had to wonder if Paul Hogan was terrified that if he introduced any subtlety into his performance someone might think that deep down he was gay. As for the truly talented Michael Caton, he looked throughout as though he wished he was anywhere but in this sad little film. It would have been interesting to see the same film made by the wonderful people who brought us "The Castle" and "The Dish". Or even to have handed it over to an experienced French director capable of giving the story and the characters a modicum of depth and shading.