Boarding Gate

You have to start worrying when you see that Michael Madsen is leading the Cast of any movie. I wont go through the list of shame that is his movie career.

I watched 45 minutes and still was not sure what really was going on. The movie consisted of a love hate relationship between Madsen and Argento, Which basically was Madsen insulting her, threatening violence and generally treating her like dirt. She on the other hand loves him, then shes doesn't, then she does, the she desires him, then she loves him again......whats wrong with you woman !!!!

The Script is awful, lousy soundtrack and pointless aggressive and crude sexuality which i believe was added to entice some viewers as the movie has little else to offer. I would have given the movie a 1 but it just about managed a 2 with a little excitement in the last 20 minutes. It did actually answer one question in the final few minutes but i am not going to share that, i will make you suffer for the full movie like i did.

If you're an average guy like me and enjoy good acting, good plot, good scripts, novel ideas, or being entertained, you might want to skip this one. I was honestly bored from the opening credits to the very end, but tried to give the film a chance, and watched it all the way through -- only to be disappointed at every turn.

The acting was unbelievably sub par, but I'm not sure if the actors themselves are to blame or if it was the ridiculously wooden and horrible dialog coupled with an even worse script. The plot is very vague and underdeveloped and I think the audience is supposed to derive some kind of deeper meaning from it, or be able to look past it in some way, but honestly to do so would be a waste of time.

The film has a kind of crude sexuality to it which doesn't serve any purpose other than to show off some tattoos and lingerie. No one seems to have any motivation except making money off of some kind of "investment" deal that is never really explained. The connections between the characters aren't terribly clear, and there is little to no character development.

This is either some kind of sub-culture film meant for a very specific audience to enjoy or absolute crap, but you can decide for yourselves.

I gave it a 2 because it is definitely one of the worst films I've ever seen, but probably not THE worst.

....are some of the words I would use to describe "Boarding Gate". It's a mix of different genres (drama, action, travelogue), languages (English, Chinese, French), ethnic backgrounds (the three main leads are a European, an American and an Asian). It's not a "Girls-With-Guns" film or a study in madness, despite what the cover or the tagline ("She's losing control again") seem to indicate. Asia Argento is raw and uninhibited as usual, and, like her or not, you've gotta hand it to her: there aren't many actresses out there who would tackle on the role she has here. But while it is refreshing to see a movie where you don't know how everything will turn out within the first 10 minutes, there doesn't seem to be much of a point to this whole exercise, apart maybe from "becoming an amateur contract killer is not such a good idea". Is it worth watching? I can't quite make up my mind about that, so I'll give it ** out of 4 stars.

I would have never imagined that Olivier Assayas could be able to make such a thriller; I saw him more intellectual, and seeing Michael Madsen in one of Assayas' film is totally incredible, unbelievable; as if you had seen John Wayne playing in a Gerard Oury's movie. But the result is pretty good, interesting, tense, taut. It is not an action film, only a few of them, despite Michael Madsen's presence only half of the movie. It is a bit psychological and erotic too. But again, i did not think director Assayas could do such thriller movie. Financial, erotico and interesting film. Asia Argento is excellent here.

This is not quite as muddled as made out to be, but it's not any kind of Hong Kong pistol stuff that it may appear to be based on plot and cast either. It's the kind of film that presents itself as a thriller but is actually about people and the structure.

It's a two-part complex. The first part plays like an emotional upskirt peek at the tormented soul of this woman, who loved at the hands of a man who tossed and toyed her around for pleasure. She's played by Asia Argento who so effortlessly can channel sex mixed with pain - one of her early film roles after all was back in Italy for father Dario, where she falls victim to a serial rapist. We get some stuff about drugs, pistols are whipped out then forgotten again.

Now the French touch, our first pointer about what it's all really about; she becomes the character she has written about, a fictional sci-fi woman who controls men.

Tables are switched, and turns out she was really manipulating this whole time from inside the image he had been used to subdue. For the second part we fly down to Hong Kong where it threatens again to become a thriller. Pistols are whipped out again and forgotten once more. Here we come to understand that she's fallen prey to another lover controlling her for own purposes. There's another woman who is also vying for control of her strings, a sexual antagonist.

So having consummated one desire about revenge, she is not one step closer to being a free person. Her present suffering is still bound to that first violence that was a sexual desire; this is given to us as having been raped in her sleep, and so the horrible hurt of an unconscious drive, repressed, felt to be beyond any control and so any responsibility. Aptly enough, this second part is about self-discovery then; she's vulnerable for the first time, no more games or roles, conceding to flow where it may.

It is film noir as far as world dynamics go, make no mistake. To pursue desire is to be trapped helpless in a self-generating chimera.

Usually in noir that desire was codified as the femme fatale and who is here our protagonist but rendered as an image, a fictional guise, full of cracks suggesting the distraught person behind.

Finally she follows this second manipulative lover so that it can be revealed to us who was pulling the strings from behind all this time. She gets a second chance for revenge. The final image is one of poignant beauty, as blurry, out-of-focus for the world of plotting and machinations that we felt as the film, she ascends out of view liberated. She is literally no longer part of the film that was pure deceit from the start.

So for all intents and purposes, it should have been a great film about karmic cycles. It's not quite, but only because, for some reason, this was felt that should also appeal to a broad audience. So, it's filmed in a syncopated manner that is associated with TV, which makes sense in context because the camera is meant to be a frantic eye searching for things as she is, but which probably threw a curveball at those who usually expect a character study in long painterly sweeps and would be otherwise rewarded here.

It didn't help that it came out in the same year as No Country, another post-noir, much more overtly cinematic, and a host of other well-received films. So not a groundbreaking film, but see it if it shows up.