ncouch

There's so much here that we've seen before, and in much better movies (eg. Trading Places, Three Days of the Condor). There are enormous technical flaws (satellite surveillance on an overcast day? nobody noticed the big box with the video camera in it? the bad guys plant >six< bugs on Will's person, there are bugs all over his house and on his phone, but they didn't bother to do the garage?). Gabriel Byrne is wasted in a pitifully brief role. You are far too frequently aware of Will Smith's acting as acting. And yet...somehow I got into the interaction between Hackman and Smith, and managed some involvement in the picture for about the last half. This in spite of the director's irritating MTV style.

A stunning albeit challenging achievement in film! You must retrain your "movie senses," but once you do, what an experience! This is not about life in the valley, but the life OF the valley. I would love to see other James Benning pictures, if I could only find them. His movies only play at festivals and obscure art houses and museums, as far as I can tell.

The problem with WND is that it's all about the money. From the opening scene right through to the end, everything that happens is driven by money or the lack thereof. That's a hard, cold core around which to wrap all these lovely Irish (well, Manx really) vistas and all these craggy Irish faces. If the filmmakers meant to remake Local Hero, they clearly missed the story that movie told. It's a story of friendship and belonging, of learning to connect. The money's there in Local Hero, but only to move the plot along. In Waking Ned Devine, all you really know about the characters is how they react to pounds from heaven. The money is the whole movie.