A Common Man

Any movie with Ben Kingsley surely cant be as bad as reviews here said. Really, I love this guy. But after seeing "a common man", I stand corrected. Its even worse. The script is ridiculous, the dialog so bad its almost hilarious, the music is painfully bad, the acting absolute rubbish. I hate to say it, but even Kingsley is anything but impressive in this movie.

Throughout the movie I kept thinking there has to be a back-story to this. How did this thing ever get made and why oh why did Kingsley ever sign up for it?

I got to write a few more lines before I can submit this. But I have nothing else to say. Don't waste your time on this.

Firstly, there are several sound problems left over from poor editing. A loud crackle at 7 minutes, echoed dialogue at 30 mins etc. These are caused by gaps and sync issues in the time-line of the editing software. They are short and don't interfere with the film, but it shows a lack of faith in the producers, editor and director that they cant even watch their own product before sending it to market. There are also moments when some dialogue is quiet so you turn the volume up, then it gets loud and you turn it down. Keep the remote nearby as you will be juggling the volume a lot. There is some English dubbing throughout but thats to be expected for a film not set in an English speaking country.

The director is very ambitious. He knows how to position a camera to get artistic. Overhead shots of fights in the alley, crane shots and quiet long takes showing the bomber. It appears he has just come out of film school and this is his first passion project. How he got Ben Kinglsey onboard is the biggest question to ask. Even the cameras are a decent grade HD, better than some big budget blockbusters. I will say the colour is a little drowned out though. He also needs to learn to avoid pointing the camera at the sunlight from windows when doing interior shots.

The acting is poor, and the script is cliché. The dialogue is tough to watch. Thankfully most of the film is focused on the silent bad guy, who holds your attention enough to keep you watching. Its short and the story is easy to follow.

This is not however a bad film. It has lots of potential and is a learning experience for the crew especially. You can see them enhancing their CV credits while they pretend to be background police officers. If they watch back this film and learn from all their mistakes, they will be rewarded.

As for us viewers, watching what is essentially a student film, its not something I can recommend mainly because of the constantly changing volume issue. I picked it up on bluray at the dollar store, so its not breaking the bank at least.

This movie was so terrible that I was so surprised that how could it turn out to be, with an actor like Ben. But then I realized that the whole production team and the cast was just horrible, so there's no surprise that it was an epic failure.

Made me wonder whether they did have a casting session before selecting the cast or at least even read the script twice! Why didn't they go for Sri Lankan actors? Instead, they had to go for people who called themselves actors, only god knows from where they were picked up from.

Major blow to Sri Lanka and as a Sri Lankan, I am quite crossed about making this movie. I hope people will not think bad about Sri Lankan movies, because we produce many good movies which goes and wins foreign movie festival awards. But among them, here this is, smearing mud on our faces.

Absolutely horrible. Cannot give 0. So I'm giving 1 out of 10.

Ben Kingsley is one of those actors that is always amazing but takes on such a wide variety of strange roles that sometimes he gets thrown into something that he just can't save. At the same time he has delivered so many brilliant performances that those few missteps can be ignored. Fresh of the triumph of his awesome performance in Iron Man 3 comes his latest film A Common Man alongside Ben Cross. Will this be another great performance to add to his impressive resume or be lost in struggling film?

A Common Man follows a terrorist who plants several bombs around the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka and threatens to detonate them unless prisoners are released. This is one of those movies that initially looks fairly low budget and could have easily fallen into obscurity if not for the star power of Ben Kingsley. The film opens leaving little mystery to what is happening and what Kingsley's character is up to or so you think. Thanks to some clever writing and another great performance by Kingsley this film takes an interesting and unexpected turn to create a film that is much better than it would have been. On the flip side most of those around the rest of the film deliver OK performances with Ben Cross seemingly just walking through his performance and offering nothing all that much the character or the film. This film plays as more of a thriller as opposed to an action film and leads you down a path that has been touched on numerous times, but quickly makes a U-turn into a completely different direction.

This is an intriguing film that manages to create a story that is sure to keep you invested until the very end. As mentioned before while most of the performances do nothing to really suck you in, its Kingsley's performance that carries this movie. This isn't a perfect movie by any means, but does offer some interesting twists and turns that make this film worth checking out.

Despite B movie prod. value, its a great effort, engaging and.....Ben Kingsley and Ben Cross. You'd have to dig hard into the 45+/- years of Ben Kingsley's career to find something not worth revisiting.

its refreshing to see suspense, well paced action/editing and performances in a movie that may unfortunately escape mainstream media's radar. too many times, big budget films prey upon the audience's desires for violence, T&A and the obvious, but this one didn't.

The movie has some flaws, we've seen similar themes (its a remake too) in other big releases, and again, the prod. value is flawed, particularly dubbing. My vote of 8 stars is generous, but attention should be drawn to A Common Man.

Maybe you predict the ending, maybe not.

I consider this a nice change of pace. In fact, after viewing the film, I visited IMDb, saw one review (more or less panning A Common Man), so i chose to offer my first review. I hope my opinion is helpful to you.