Tiros na Escuridão

In the first 20 minutes of this flick I began to wonder if there was an Amsterdam in the U.S. Not one major or minor role in this movie had a Dutch accent. This distracted me from enjoying an otherwise interesting story set in one of Europe's oldest cities.

Distraction then led to befuddlement. The Script writer seemed fixated on Amsterdam's reputation as a purveyor of child porn and pedophilia. There was more than a couple of instants were characters made reference to their own awful proclivity.

Add to that gruesome and astonishingly gratuitous scenes of violence which were oddly incongruous (ie. the ambulance wheel rolling over a para-medic's head mashing it like an over-ripe pumpkin.)

But most of all. I could not believe Oscar-winner, William Hurt or even Jennifer Tilly and Dennis Leary could associate themselves with this strange and uneven film.

When a so called lovable little girl is involved in a suspense story,what do you expect? Certainly not the unexpected! You can see in her eyes that the villains will not get the upper hand.The more helpless she seems ,the stronger she is when danger comes around.Dumb but not dumb! The supporting cast is wasted:William Hurt is cast as the father and all he has to do is wait ;Jennifer Tilly 's part is not much more exciting:all she's got to do is bemoan over her unfortunate daughter's fate.You will guess who pulls the string as soon as that villain appears on the screen.

Only the first scenes in the hotel can ,at a pinch,generate some suspense.But after that,it's downhill.The worst is that horrible "singer" ,pedophile at that!On the other hand ,Dennis Leary's junkie is quite nice.

Get "Amsterdamned" instead!

This strange movie is about a 10 year old girl who is a witnesses a murder. In the rest of the movie she's pursued by the murderer. The special effects are great especially in the end when a ambulance (with the girl in the back) gets persued by the police. On the other hand, the story is realy bad. Clues appear out of nothing and everyone is speaking English which makes the story not realistic

This ranks amongst the worst films I've ever seen. I bought the DVD based on the plot summary which sounded interesting and because William Hurt was one of the actors who normally features in great movies. After about 15 minutes, when we got to the gangster scene at the back of the hotel, I had to check the back of the box to see if it was a comedy rather than a "thriller with more twists and turns than the streets of Amsterdam itself". The ridiculous story line and the ham acting were making me laugh. I persevered to the end of the film in the desperate hope that there would be a great point or message but alas this film had absolutely no redeeming features for me. Truly awful. It says on the back cover "When you can't scream you can only run..." but I figured out another two options, cringe or howl with laughter.

...by watching this tripe! I waited nearly 3 years to see this film because I really enjoy William Hurt's performances, so you can imagine how shocked and (yes) disturbed I was when I began watching it on cable last night and saw how unbelievably BAD he is in this movie. He has a ridiculous on-again off-again Southern accent, and he cannot say one single line of dialogue that sounds convincing.

The material he's given is horrendous, it's true -- badly paced, thoroughly uneven in every way: the plot veers from pathetic stabs (no pun intended) at black comedy to morbid, monotonous melodrama and car chases, with not one truly satisfying moment in the entire film. Jennifer Tilly, surprisingly, came off very well here - she was believable and sympathetic throughout. Actually, there WAS one satisfying moment -- when this torturous exercise in trashy tedium finally wrapped up and the end titles rolled on the screen. William Hurt must have wanted to visit Amsterdam really bad.