RequiemForAJohn

Anyone who's seen this movie and given it a 10 may feel good about themselves for promoting what obviously started as an underground film, but an honest look will show you that this movie is grossly overrated. Before I get labeled as someone who "just doesn't get it" concerning this movie, I'd like to explain what I expected: a movie with everything over-the-top: Violence, cursing, and (most importantly) Samuel L. Jackson. What I got was glimpses of the movie I expected interspersed with, unfortunately, what looked like real attempts at plot and character development. Especially painful was watching the rap star's transformation from good guy to bad and back to good again. Pointless, it added nothing to the film. What hurt the most, though, was a lack of Mr. Jackson. He was in the movie, but other than the one expected line towards the end of the film, there really wasn't anything else that was quotable in there. I thought he'd be cursing and killing snakes left and right, but by the time he finally said his "mother *beep* snakes" line, the audience's cheering where I watched it was half-hearted as though to say "well, that was good, but where were all the other parts I came here to cheer for?" Most of the "extreme" scenes felt forced (just think about the line from the guy who pees on the snake), while all it would have taken to make this movie awesome was to not hold back or strive for "acting" or "plot". I gave the movie a 5 because, come on, Sam Jackson is the man and, admittedly, there were some pretty damn funny parts... but I really wanted to rate this higher. The idea was great, but I didn't feel it came close to the hype. Instead, I left feeling like I'd just watched all the deleted scenes of a great movie that just didn't measure up to the finished product.

Huzzah! Another movie with Jennifer Connelly on the end of a pier! Include this movie with "Requiem for a Dream" and "Dark City" on her growing list of movies in which she's at the end of a pier. Does she work it into her contracts that she gets to walk out on piers? Does she have a pier-fetish? A mystery, and a delightful one at that! And in her first two movies, she wears a red dress out on the piers, but not in this one! Is there underlying significance? Is she trying to tell us something? Perhaps not.

All in all, I thought this was a very good movie. Powerful acting by Kingsley and Connelly, and some of the shots were very nice, most notably the one where Lester (Ron Eldard) walks out of the house for the first time through the mist. That would be a poster I'd hang on my wall.