Incendiário

I had never heard of this film, nor did I read anything about it on IMDb beforehand, so I had no expectations whatsoever when I sat down for it. By 20 minutes in, I was enjoying it a lot. Michelle Williams was putting on a London accent which seemed flawless to me. (Okay, I'm a Texan, what do I know about English accents?) The big event seemed to be done pretty well. The film is mainly psychological, about dealing with loss. Miss Williams does very well with this material, and indeed, her performance is the best part of the film. But when I got into the final third of the film, my enjoyment started to flag. The flashback scenes were way overdone, even though I get that it was the director's way of showing the character's break with reality. And in the end, the character's shocking naivete about the mindset of Islamic terrorists was extremely jarring. Overall, I liked the movie, but I am not sure that I could recommend it to anyone else.

A young beautiful woman (Michelle Williams) is trapped in an empty marriage tucked away in an ugly apartment block in London. Her pride and joy in her grey existence is her 4-year-old son. One day, as the two of them are at the football match, she seduces a slick journalist Jasper (Ewan McGregor) in the local pub. As fate would have it, they are locked in a lovers embrace, with the football match raging on behind them on TV, when the stadium going up in flames with a series of explosions. Her husband and son are both killed in the terrorist attack, leaving her broken and alone.

If you are now thinking that a film about the aftermath of a major terrorist attack from the director of Brigit Jones' Diary sounds like a recipe for disaster, then you are partly right. But it is not bad for the reason you might think. The film is, for the most part, an emotional roller- coaster - you could be crying your way through most of it. But not because of her grieving for her lost family. The bombs are just the beginning - she still has to endure a full load of unlikely events in the hour to come. She understandably loses it along the way as the story becomes so over-dramatised that it is just ridiculous (especially when you run the story back in your head afterwards).

Towards the end she enters a phase of grief hallucination and reconciliation with life. As the movie is neither funny nor exciting, this should have been the route to take all along. Concentrating on the mourning of the young mother, and perhaps even throwing in some guilt towards her semi-estranged husband. Her husband is just gone with his death. He is not missed nor is there any regret for his disappearance. Even for a semi-estranged husband this sounds a little harsh - she did worry about him, after all, so she must have felt something. It is also curious that they have no family, or friends who drop by to comfort her. A lonely marriage must have pushed them into some kind of a social circle, or a hobby, or at least the occasional phone call with their mothers. Was their life really that lonely.

The movie is clearly intended as a pamphlet against terrorism, by showing the human cost at the level of ordinary people. It also takes the time to "explain" the resilience of London in a voice-over. It is a little desperate to save a movie through nationalism, but can actually be fit in here, although it could have been better prepared, by, for instance, by making her a more integral part of London. This is no masterpiece, nor an entertainment jewel, and can easily be missed altogether. A pity, because it does have some potential.

This is worth watching just for Michelle William's mesmerising performance and I'm not sure why it's been so panned by so many reviewers. The story is interesting, but it's more about emotions of lust, loss, guilt and reconciliation.

i think the main problem with the movie isn't the movie, it's that people are going in expecting a thriller instead of a drama. yes the major plot points could be covered in 5 minutes.. but that's not the point of drama. your average thriller is about things that happen and happen to have people in them. this movie is about the people and how they feel and cope when something momentous happens. if you appreciate that you'll appreciate the movie better, or not watch it cos it's not something that appeals to you.. and that's fair enough.

As far as the film goes, Michelle Williams carries it well. The accent's fine and the various states she goes through as she tries to deal with what has happened never feel you leaving disconnected or not understanding how she got there.

McGregor is his usual charming self, tho his is not really a major part (likewise MacFadyen), this is a movie about the mother and so these two don't get an awful lot of screen time.

The one fault i'd say is that the passage of time is not particularly well expressed particularly right at the end of the film when what seems to be a present day Ewan is wearing the exact same outfit as in the next scene which must be set sometime after.

Regardless, it's a decent movie, but requiring empathy.. so if you prefer action flicks, watch something else.

An awful waste of 1 hour and 35 minutes. Don't do this to yourself, unless you really enjoy pretentious melodramas with little or no story.

According to the producers, and IMDb, this is a "Drama/Romance/Thriller". Make no mistake - it is not romance, and most certainly not a thriller.

"Like watching paint dry" is an old saying, and probably as meaningless a way of spending time as watching "Incendiary". Still, many of us are likely never to have sat down for an hour and a half to watch paint dry, whereas we have all seen the clichées and the pretentious rubbish which makes up this utterly awful movie. We've seen it all before, though fortunately rarely in such a mindblowingly slooow pace and without virtually any story or message behind it.

I is usually a bad sign when, 20 minutes into a film, still nothing has happened, and the information conveyed would easily fit into less than a minute. In this case, it is indeed fully indicative of what's to come: more of the same.

The story as such can be told in it's entirety in a few sentences and scenes, which in fact it also is - the remainder of the of the movie just consists of endless, clichéd retrospectives, soul searching dialogs, marathon shots of facial expressions, you name it...

Some have criticized the plausibility and credibility of the storyline, very often a problem with today's movies, but that's hardly where this movie falls down - it's in the fact that the story could easily have been told in ten minutes. It would still have been pointless, un-interesting and without meaning or message, but at least it would have been over quickly...