In America

Greetings again from the darkness. I have no idea what has taken so long for this film to be released. Director/Producer/Writer Jim Sheridan ("My Left Foot", "In the Name of the Father" "The Boxer") has always been a tremendous filmmaker and with "In America" he has become a wonderful story teller. This semi-autobiographical picture was co-written by Sheridan and his two daughters and is the story of an Irish family's immigration to New York. I am a fan of Levinson's "Avalon" and Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" and I will rank this with both. It causes what I call "crossover". That is when I no longer feel I am watching a movie, but that I become part of the story. The characters are no longer actors, but real people. The writing, directing and acting are all terrific. Paddy Considine (a Stephen Rea lookalike), Samantha Morton ("Minority Report"), Djimon Hounsou ("Gladiator") are all exceptional in their roles. However, this movie belongs to the real-life Bolger sisters, Sarah and Emma, who play Christy and Ariel. Ariel's innocence and need to believe along with Christy's wisdom-beyond-her-years truly make this film work. Rarely do child actors carry a movie of significance. While these two bring joy, laughter, sadness and tears, they never cross the line of overly cute or overly sympathetic. Another odd twist to this film is the importance that Spielberg's "ET" plays. The dream of home and the presence of aliens (drug dealers, etc) in their tenemant tie in nicely. Their friendship with Mateo (Hounsou) is both bizarre and heartwarming. This is an extremely emotional ride for the audience, but one well worth taking.

I love this little film. I was pregnant at the time when I saw it with my husband who is from Ireland. We both enjoyed the film for it's romance, it's humanity, and qualities that were so earthy and yet somehow ethereal. It was both beautiful and moving--one of those rare finds that illuminates, truth, beauty, and the honesty that art can evoke. Art--especially the theater and cinema has the power to inspire and can be so powerful. This film is living proof of that. The film has an integrity and a quality of strength that few films ever capture. It is my dream to both create and perform in little films like this. I want to inspire and create something that makes a spiritual leap--something that lasts and endures for all time because of its quality of a diamond in the rough. If you want to see something a bit unusual, though provoking, emotional, and rare--see this film.

I'm not really big on this kind of film, but this one won me over in a big way. Jim Sheridan has such a sure hand as a director that even as the story meanders along, and you're not quite sure where things are going, you know HE knows and you end up trusting him and going along for whatever ride he wants to take you on. The characters and the actors portraying them are so winning, you don't want the movie to end. You just want to stay with them forever.

Every role, right down to the two border guards and the hospital administrator are perfectly cast and performed. The two sisters playing the daughters are amazing. But the acting in the film really belongs to Samantha Morton. It really is a high wire act. In lesser hands this character might have been completely unbelievable. But her love for her husband and children is so palpable, you completely buy everything she has to go through with them.

There were so many chances for cheap sentiment here, but the movie never went there. Really beautiful.

Although they tell border control that they are on holiday, Johnny, Sarah and their two daughters have immigrated illegally into the US in the early 1980's. They move to New York into a block full of junkies and down-and-outs. With little money and no friends the family face all manner of stresses and strains in their present and from their past – stresses that threaten the family unit and their future together.

The names in this project attracted me to it and I did have high hopes for it. The film itself though is a strange, rather frustratingly mixed affair that is really good in some regards but annoyingly soapy in others. The plot is not really a plot in the traditional sense but more the recollections of moving into the new world told from the perspective of elder daughter Christy. I was fine with this approach and hoped that it would be convincing, engaging, moving and so on. Although you can see everyone working against it, the film cannot avoid the spirit of sentimentality and soapy-drama seeping into the majority of the scenes. This takes away from the grit and reality of the drama and does make it harder to get into because it doesn't engage in the way that the same events may have if they had been delivered with more grit and less of the soapy-inspirational quality.

It is a shame that the film cannot shake this off but it is not the fault of the cast who are roundly really good. Considine yet again gives me good reason to respect him as an actor, likewise Morton who works well with him as well as individually. They are really well supported by two very natural and engaging performances from the Bolger sisters; they are "cute kids" but not in a way that is cloying or annoying. Hounsou has a strong presence in the film and to his credit he delivers this despite the material handed him – not because of it. The cast doesn't really have a weakness and one can only imagine what this film would have been if Sheridan had been given people capable of a lot less.

Overall then this is a mixed affair. The performances and direction makes it better than it could otherwise have been, but these cannot shake off the sentimentality and soapy feel that much of it has. The end result is a film that has great moments and a story that I really wanted to lose myself in but ultimately was just too melodramatic at its core for all the strengths to totally overcome.

If you're of a sensitive caring disposition, are empathetic, loving and genuinely see the best in people then this is a film for you. No leaps of faith needed here as Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton share with us the plight of those less well off than most. After suffering a traumatic family event we find them in a new country, a new city, with all its cultural variations and contradictions to overcome - a landscape of limited opportunity. Join them on their journey but be warned, their daughters Christy and Ariel will steal your heart, break you in two, stream tears from your soul. Join them on their journey and let it remind you what it means to be alive.