sioenroux

If you can't handle people talking, you probably don't want to watch this film. On the other hand, if you're brain isn't so damaged or dysfunctional that you require constant car crashes, explosions, chase scenes or gunfights in order to stay awake and alert, then you might really like this movie.

I preface my brief review that way because as interesting, complex, smart, funny, tense and intriguing as this movie is... it also is nothing more than a roomful of people talking the whole time. There are no convenient flashbacks or cutaways to illustrate some of the issues they discuss. You get to use your -- wait for it, wait... -- imagination for that part. Plus, it's necessary to the plot for you to remain in uncertainty.

This is a great piece of science fiction, and a fun ride through a thought-experiment-made-real for this character's group of friends. Give it a try, if you're capable.

I didn't begin watching "Invictus" with any hopes of seeing something unique, edgy or original -- after all, a bare sketch of the plot tells you this is another of the "Can-the-sports-team-make-it-against-the-odds? Oh-it-will-be-tough-but-in-the-end they'll-all-be-better-people-because-of-the-struggle" genre.

I had hopes that with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, it might rise above the cliché formula. No, it didn't. They are both OK, but not nearly OK enough to save this clunker.

The level of Hollywood formula is off the charts. Every camera angle, every scene, you can predict with startling accuracy. That doesn't necessarily have to doom a movie (although for me, it pretty much does, because I hate nothing so much as predictability, especially scene by scene), but here it's just so pat you wonder if Clint Eastwood was sleeping through the whole thing.

What really sunk this film for me, though -- I mean, I rarely ever turn off a movie, and I could only handle this one for 20 minutes, after which I used FF and skimmed a few scenes along the way to see it through to the 'exciting' conclusion -- was the incredibly awful dialogue. Awful. Stilted. Ham-fisted. Sounded like a bad Hallmark afterschool special writer had come up with it. Really really bad.

I like Morgan Freeman a lot. In fact, in the past, I had jokingly said to friends that I could listen to him read the telephone book because I like the way he delivers lines. I am reconsidering that joke. "We must (pause) work together (pause) if we are (pause) going to (pause) rebuild our country." Repeat that line about 80 times in the first 15 minutes. With the same awkward pauses. Maybe this was Freeman capturing Mandela really well -- I don't know. What I do know is it was awful to try to watch.

In any case, let me submit for your consideration that you save your time. If you read the plot synopsis and look at the poster, you'll already have as full an experience as this movie is capable of delivering.

Going into "The Hurt Locker," I was expecting an Oscar-worthy couple hours. Sadly, I was disappointed. This is a somewhat enjoyable film, but only if you remove the lenses of reality and treat it as a popcorn action movie that desperately wants to be more than it is.

At first, I liked the treatment of the Iraq war in a neutral way -- showing the gritty awfulness of war without descending into the political maelstrom surrounding the U.S. invasion. But with time, it just became more and more problematic for me. The Iraq war isn't neutral, and much of the reality was lost with the superficial stereotyping of both sides in an attempt to steer clear of controversy.

The bigger problem for me, though, was the ridiculousness of the squad's behavior. I have no military experience or family or friends, but this just looked all wrong right from the beginning. Reading many of the comments on here, it seems actual military folks agree. No bomb squad works this way, and most of the "tense" scenes were terrifically unrealistic. They also had zero suspense for me, as the filmmakers telegraphed what was going to happen every time.

Where I thought the movie worked was as an abstract piece of human drama. Jeremy Renner gives a great performance, as do his co-stars. And if you let all the realism problems go and watch the movie for what it appears the filmmakers were trying to say -- that the ugliness of war creates both an adrenaline need and a fatalism that allows increasingly dangerous risk-taking -- the movie is kind of enjoyable.

I find that theme fairly flaccid as a real commentary on war, though -- and especially impotent as a portrayal of the Iraq war, of all things.

There are great war movies that reveal the horror and human drama of war while being realistic, acknowledging the truth and lies in foreign policy and still avoiding polemics. This is not one of those films.