waynestedman

However, if you can keep track of who is betraying whom and when, more like at what moment in the movie, you can join Einsteinian ranks. Also, the two young stars, Leonardo and Ben, look so much alike and are built so much similarly and have so closely linked scenarios of betrayal or loyalty...take your pick...you do not really know who is whom until almost but not quite the last frame. And yes, there is a lady angle.No more needs to be said along that line. She is fine. There are a few jabs at fags, too, but not many.

This film is filled with wonderful cult performances all around, of course. This is pro Hollywood. And it reads like some of the Best Boston Blood crime stories. Cannot right now think of the author, but he had a string of cult best sellers based on the not so dainty Boston.

But hold your seats, track this dizzy slide ride carefully. The pace is fast, the editing split second.

If you can figure out who is betraying Whom at any one point, hang on to your judgment until the last scenes. Do not be hasty.

Of course, the original story was first filmed in a movie set in L.A., and Boston is a bit more colorful than The Southland, in a film called "Internal Affairs." They are internal, that is for sure.

They mention the earlier film in the credits, that one a few years ago, set in L.A. Oddly Boston is more colorful,like red for blood.

For all these talented people, i can only say one minor thing: It takes about half of the film before you have finally figured out which one Di Caprio is playing, which one Ben is playing, and who is betraying whom. These two young actors, fine fine fine, started out roughly at the same time and resemble each other so much it is really hard to keep track. A hint, but not a giveaway, check the face hair, make a decision based on that. It works.

buckle your seat belts. YOu will not really really know until the last frame. Who is the good guy, who is the bad guy, are there really any of either. Your choice.

In other words, Yes, Virginia, it is THAT GOOD, if you like nitty gritty Boston stuff.

bloody Boston crime,accents and all.....

This is a beautifully performed movie. In its second week in Paris at the spanking new Bibliotheque movie complex near the Gare D'Austerlitz, a few of us sat through it. The problem is that if you are not warned in advance about the technique it will take you quite a lot of time to determine whether you are watching an error or something new. Meantime, your mind works like a slot machine searching matching lineups symbols to figure out what is going on, who are these wonderfully attractive young people? Then you figure it out gradually, and by then your interest is quite well enough piqued that you will sit it out. Then you begin to enjoy it for what it is: A needle's stitch attempt to get on the screen the solitary joy of the novelists' technique of easily, gradually joining disparate stories all in one easy moment but spread across ninety minutes or so on screen and not on pages and paragraphs. In a novel, you can put the book down, think about it, go back to it. No such luxury here. And there could have been more stories here, and in fact you are left with the feeling that tons of stories have not been told at all or even touched upon. Or may even follow in a continuing stream of consciousness after you leave the film. In other words, this is a delicate examination of the choices we have to make in life just to get through it. Existence, in other words.

This very quietly preachy film was extremely interesting to someone who has not lived in the United States for about forty years, like the lady who went me to the film yesterday as it opened here with a long delay. She said to me: "So that is how my grandchildren would be living and speaking over there, so nice that i do not have to hear them."

The dialogue is so politically correct that it rarely says anything at all, and this is its point, i would venture to say. Nothing is being said. nothing is being lived. these are portraits of people working two jobs just to be able to shop at walmart, keep their cars going or share rides if they do not have cars or bikes. So the blank verse continues right through the plot. Things happen and make no noise as they happen like dropping a roll of paper on a concrete floor, there is just a slight murmur.

If you like symbolism, i.e. the culture of masks, there is plenty of that to keep a film class going for a semester.

The characters remind me of Ayn Rand's ending of Atlas Shrugged: The world ended not with a bang, but a whimper. That has been repeated so often that few persons realize that Ms Rand wrote it first.

This film definitely ends on that sort of note, but in the long run it was worth seeing. Yes Virginia, i do recommend it.

In effect, with its pervasively normal portrayal of drugs and blank minds, it is sort of an instamatic of a dystopian society.

But hey, everyone seemed happy enough.