Jim Sheridan, UK / Ireland, 20023 out of 4 stars
Maybe it's just because I went a while without watching any movies, but lately, I've been having a lot of trouble evaluating the films I've been seeing. This in particular is a strange animal, in that it constantly threatens gloom and doom but veers away from it towards something else, as the bad events are mostly in the past, gradually developed through furtive references.
In fact, it's had to get a handle on the rhythm of this story, in which an Irish family illegally immigrates into Manhattan. It seems to be some kind of memoir which may explain why the story doesn't unravel in a very "clean" manner, but there are nonetheless some pretty obvious cinematic conventions going on here, the most glaring of which is the Magical Black Man (a la The Green Mile et al), played here by Djimon Hounsou. Dismissing his plotline in such a way may seem harsh, but it's pretty accurate.
And yet... it is a crime for a story not to go the way you expect it to? This does seem like a fairly insightful character study, and the acting is good, especially from the children, believe it or not (although they do sorta look a bit too clean and happy, too much like they are about to go home to their suburban homes right after the scene wraps, which of course they are, I imagine). I can't really tell if the filmmakers are subverting expectations or just confused or deceitful about the story they want to tell, and I suspect I'm being too hard on a good film... so consider this somewhere in between 2.5 and 3 stars.
Source: Fox DVD
27 March, 8:35 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment