I knew next to nothing about this film other than the fact that it starred Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter, and that it had some experimental use of split screen. It’s playing in quite limited release, and was playing at one of the theaters I regularly go to, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. I’m a big fan of the two lead cast members, and this film is 99.8% them. There are only a small handful of other actors that have speaking parts, and those are extremely brief. This movie is all about our two lead actors/characters. Then there’s the fun use of split screen presentation, which features some very clever and slick editing. And to top it all off, the writing is actually quite good as well. Through the whole movie, you never quite know what’s going on or going to ultimately happen, right up through the end (and the nifty, clever final scene). This is a movie entirely about characters. I don’t want to describe the characters, because it’ll give away some details that’ll ruin some of the surprise laid in through the film. Ulimately, this movie would fail without solid casting in the two lead roles, and Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter are brilliant in the roles. Hopefully Eckhart will achieve an A-list star status, because he certainly deserves it. He’s one of my favorite actors, and it’s great to see him continue to pop up in huge Hollywood productions and small independent films like this. Make no mistake, this film is very “independent” in nature. If you like indie character dramas, featuring solid writing, performances and production, you like this one as much as I did. If you have doubts, check out the trailer. (though don’t read the plot description on that trailer page)

Aaaaack. Given the cast in this film, I was expecting to at least moderately like it. No such luck. Despite the good cast, this self-important, uninteresting, moderately annoying movie falls completely flat. And when it tries to be funny, it feels so completely out of place and in no way mixes with the melodramatic tripe found through the rest of the film. We have a movie populated by either really bad stereotypes or screwed up characters spouting their life philosophy endlessly. Then you have characters that are acting like complete screw-ups, for what feels like completely fake or forced reasons. “I was scared.” Yeah, whine me a river. And poor Zach Braff suffers the brunt of the character stupidity found in the film. Blythe Danner gets a good helping of the unmotivated, bipolar behavior. None of it feels real. Then, to be forced to sit there and listen to these characters ramble on and on and on and on about why their lives are so screwed up, when all they need to do is buy a mirror and go their seperate ways. Now, the only reason I give this movie a 2 out of 10 is for Casey Affleck’s character, who is the only interesting character in the film, and is the only one where I actually felt the motivation and reasoning behind their actions. And Affleck is very well cast in the role. He’s the only redeeming feature of the film, really. And the worst thing about this film - the ending. After all this rambling about being scared, having purpose, forgiveness and all the other nonsense paraded throughout, we get Tom Wilkinson’s character finally advising Braff’s to not give up. So, despite everything she says, and rightfully so, Braff’s love interest finally just gives in because he won’t go away and finally leave her alone. We don’t get a word from her character by that point, as the movie ends. So, forgiveness is represented as simply being too worn down to fight any more? Oh yeah, that’s a brilliant moral conclusion. On that final moment, as it fades to black, it was one of those movie-going moments where I was sitting there in the theater saying under my breath, “what, that’s it?”

Then, to make matters worse, my suffering through this movie was partially my own fault. I saw the name Paul Haggis on the writing credit when I was watching the movie. The name was familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. I finally had to look it up when I got home. This is the idiot who wrote the piece of steaming crap called Crash (not the underrated Cronenberg film - the horrid Oscar winning thing from last year). And as I looked at Haggis’ filmography I was disappointed to see his name associated with the new James Bond film, Casino Royale (though I think it might only be in a minor capacity) as well as the promising-looking new Clint Eastwood film Flags Of Our Fathers (though again he shares screenwriting credit with others, and it’s based on a book). I’m definitely going to be very hesitant in seeing anything I see his name on from here out. After suffering through Crash and then this film, he’s rapidly working his way up my avoid list.