Bel Canto

I have never heard of the book this movie is taken from !

It's such an unbelievable story you have to watch it to the end. And when it's all over your first question will be -- "What"?

It's like pulling tape off a tape dispenser and suddenly you hit the end of the role and you haven't finished your project. You still need more tape!

María Mercedes Coroy and Ryo Kase are certainly the shine in this movie!

A few facts: on 17 December 1996, 14 Tupac Amaru guerillas took over the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru, holding 700 plus people hostage. This total was quickly reduced to 72 hostages. The event lasted 126 days (!), with the result that we all know. Now out of this event, a soggy, inept movie has been made. Paul Weitz has little sense of pace and dramatic effect. The viewer is left thinking 'What does this have to do with anything?' too many times. The hostages have little individuality, are mainly interchangeable; the guerillas have vague motivations that we can only guess at. Julianne Moore and Sebastian Koch have done better work. I had the wish that they had hired Renee Fleming to play the soprano, she would have added a good deal of charm and star quality to this sad effort.

Hardly a realistic plot to narrate, with great perspective though mostly because of Julianne. And somewhere between small doses of suspense and greater of humanity, the film leaves us with the feeling of unfinished business, as if the director wanted simply to proceed without the emotional strength, this movie could bring. It got flat at this very moment anyone expected the power behind the facts. Anyway, it was no waste of time, enjoyable but ...something finally was missing.

Classical music meets terrorism, an interesting mix. Some of the scenes in this movie are just a shade bizarrre, at times the tension is quite good, particularly in the first half of the movie, but then the tension gets broken by these odd scenes. I think the movie tries to touch on some of the terrorists vulnerabilities and how such people end up with semi-automatic weapons in their hands. But it doesn't quite get there, I wish it had stuck to one genre and thrown all its energies into that area. At the end of the day, I preferred the tension and drama to the love scenes which I didn't find plausible. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the movie, I just feel that it never falls into the greatness category. My favourite quote from the movie "Are you sure they won't shoot, not everyone likes opera"

Because I thought this was a pretty good and touching movie. One test I have, when watching a movie on cable, is how many times I pick up my phone to check the net. I didn't during this one. I will not give spoilers but it's based on a novel ... so the outcome is not a script thing but an adaptation. I thought the performances were compelling enough. Don't be discouraged by other reviews. Make up your own mind.