The End of Violence

A film producer who escapes death by murder and chooses to lead a simple life afterwards, a group of good Mexican gardeners, a second-rate movie actress who becomes jobless, a police officer who is not happy with the filing of his case, a Salvadoran maid whose family has been shot by death squads, a NASA employee who knows too much and his old father who doesn't want to exchange his old typewriter by a computer, a mysterious project of ending up violence in the world by putting everyone under surveillance, with all those ingredients what could a movie director have made? Surely an excellent movie. This one however is too much ambitious and produces rather poor results in comparison with that ambition. Where the contrast between dream and reality, love and greed, poetry and vulgarity could have been explored we are left with a story not bad in itself but not very deep and not especially moving.

"The End of Violence" is a clutter of stick figures wandering through a messy story about some sci-fi "big brother" government project being tested in Los Angeles. The film trades interesting characters for interesting situations, connects the dots too late revealing too little, and ends in a self absorbed coma about as flat as warm beer. Nonetheless, the film has a respectable cast, a garnish of neo-Beat poetry, a brooding noir feel, a good soundtrack, and some husky-voiced philosophical narration by Pullman making it a par watch for the needy couch potato. (C)

How 'bout a four? Visually, there are some great moments. I think the most interesting scenes are those where there is no dialogue but the camera follows the characters as they inwardly contemplate what this all means (Bill Pullman, Andie McDowell). Unfortunately, we as the viewers are also given (too much) time to contemplate what it means. Everything is WAY too understated. The movie slows to a stop in many places. You start to like it (the romance with Kat and the investigator, the interaction of Bill Pullman's character and the Mexican-American people) and then it doesn't follow through. The dialogue at the film school, in which the characters give a monologue for a class is probably the most interesting dialogue. Some rap, some tell a story, some recite their own poetry. That was the most moving part of the movie. While Wenders has a important point to make, it doesn't come through clearly and the viewer is left uncaring, uninterested. Maybe the only thing that could have helped the End of Violence is more good ole fashioned...violence <g>.

I don't think I've ever seen a movie that is so cerebral yet so poor at the same time. Wim Wenders is certainly revered in the film community for his offbeat ethereal productions (i.e. Wings of Desire), however, nothing profound or comprehensible can be extracted from his latest effort. It is as if four or five scripts were dropped in a studio parking lot by some clumsy intern and what was left was thrown together so that somebody wouldn't get fired. There are some common links between the characters but what does any of it have to do with the underlying plot of satellite surveillance? I kept waiting for the film to decide which plot it thought was most interesting, but it remained undecided to the very end. This was a frustrating experience to say the least.

The most aggravating aspect of this film is the fact that none of the parties involved appear to incompetent, so how is this movie so bad? Maybe I missed something...

The one saving grace of this film is the performance of Udo Kier as a German director. He alone mutters the one or two lines that managed to get me to crack a smile during this disaster.

This is an astounding movie, and as others have noted, it is precisely the kind of movie that passes most people by because it rocks so gently as to be almost imperceptible.

The first time I saw this, I was disappointed. 'Until the End of the World', to me, is a brilliant piece of work, with more beauty, reverie, and complexity than any ten average films put together.

So...I was ready for some heady stuff with 'End'. But the movie seemed to be lost, missing in action.

But six months later I watched it on video, and I realized I was looking at an entirely different movie.

Then I watched it again...and again, and again, until I'd seen the thing ten times, including one where I only listened to the film, to see if I was simply addicted to Wim's luminous visuals.

What you realize is that this film is cooking up some very threatening ideas about the quality and nature of love, and the companion six degrees of violence and hatred. It is really about the way in which fear and love pulse in contrary and similar ways, much like particle and wave, dancing together.

It's also a fantastic critique the "confederacy of dunces" and the manner in which we manufacture enemies to suit our paranoia.

I must say that there are few directors that move me as much as Wim Wenders, and I have to confess that I have cried many times over the beauty and grace of some of the scenes and visuals in this movie. Much like Robert Altman or Atom Egoyan, Wenders cares about people, believes in their struggles, and he creates tension that moves them, at least temporarily, to understand their natures more fully.

A masterpiece, if a masterpiece means your heart moves even slightly...

PS Ry Cooder's soundtrack is brilliant!