Life after death
That has less to do with the subject matter, which contemplates the possibility of a meaningful existence after death, than it has with the way in which screenwriter Peter Morgan has constructed his story.
Three disparate characters engage in probing the great imponderable in markedly different ways: French TV journalist Marie (Cécile De France) experiences a light at the end of the tunnel while drowning during a tsunami; George Lonegan (Matt Damon) is an American psychic who can communicate with the spirits of the dead; and Jason (Frankie McLaren) is a London boy who desperately wants to talk to his dead twin.
Each strand of the story is equally fascinating, although young McLaren’s performance is wretchedly stiff and wholly unconvincing, but having raised such profound questions in a fascinating way, Eastwood proceeds to allow the film to dribble away into inconsequence by bolting together the three strands in an extended finale that substitutes facile sentiment for a rigorous examination of the issues.
Damon, one of contemporary cinema’s great chameleons, is as compellingly watchable as always, and De France’s performance is also charismatic, but Eastwood’s direction, once the superb opening salvo of a terrifying tsunami dissipates, lacks focus. Worse again, perhaps, given the subject matter, is that the film itself lacks any commitment to a belief in the afterlife, or even to exploring the extent to which faith trumps fact in that particular belief.
BARNEY’S VERSION (US/15A/134 mins) stars Paul Giamatti as Barney Panofsky, a grizzled, cigar-chomping TV producer whose life is rocked when an ex-policeman publishes a book accusing Barney of the murder of his best friend, Boogie (Scott Speedman). That’s the cue for Richard J Lewis’s film to embark on an extended flashback to how Barney’s career began, but the murder is simply the device that affords screenwriter Michael Konyves access to the darker recesses of Barney’s psyche.
In truth, the story — based on Mordecai Richler’s novel of the same name — tracks Barney’s life-long obsession with his wife, Miriam (Rosamund Pike), a woman he actually met on the night of his wedding to the Second Mrs P (Minnie Driver). Lewis constructs a long, meandering and episodic film that only grudgingly acknowledges the traditional three-act structure, but Giamatti’s performance is strong enough to sustain interest throughout, and he gets strong support from Pike and Speedman, the latter playing a philandering, free-wheeling alter-ego to Barney’s perversely moral obsessive.
A SUBVERSIVE take on the traditional fairy tale, Tangled (US/PG/100 mins) offers us a Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) who is feisty and vulnerable, intelligent and naive. She’s the undoubted heroine of the piece despite the best efforts of the swashbuckling bandit Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) and the wicked Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy), both of whom have their own reasons for taking advantage of the imprisoned princess.
The animation is superbly life-like, and the film offers a winning blend of derring-do, fabulously executed action sequences, whip-crack dialogue and chaste romance. Parents should be warned that the latter stages may prove a little too dark for the very young; otherwise, this is a smart slice of escapism for young and old alike.
HOW Do You Know (US/12A/121 mins) is a romantic drama that opens with baseball player Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) and businessman George (Paul Rudd) being rudely jolted out of their life’s path, leading both to question the worth of the values they’ve espoused up to this point in their separate lives.
Happily, the disconsolate pair find one another, although complications ensue when Lisa finds herself unable to break her commitment to playboy baseball jock Matty (Owen Wilson).
The lack of a question mark in the title suggests that director James L Brooks hasn’t paid enough attention to detail. If he had, he’d have noticed that Witherspoon, Rudd and Wilson are all playing variations on characters long established in cinema-goers’ minds.
Rudd yet again plays the good-natured guy befuddled by harsh reality; Witherspoon the put-upon but relentlessly good-natured everywoman; Wilson the wacky, good-natured guy who so lacks for self-awareness it’s almost, but not quite, funny. All of which means that the finale has a wearying inevitability that is virtually pre-ordained, which undermines any hope of narrative tension.
Brooks, who also wrote the screenplay, apparently couldn’t decide which of his three proposed endings was the least predictable, which is presumably why he included all three.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
