aarond23

I saw this movie recently and found it pretty interesting though not overwhelming good. It follows a family and community in Nicrauaga as they talk about the past war and there is a lot of focus on the Evangelical religious beliefs of some of the community, including talk about demons and ghosts.

I would have liked to have seen more focus on the misogynistic views of some of the men but that wasn't really investigated, and we didn't learn a lot about anyone except the elderly mother, the daughter and the twin brothers, and really only one brother of the twins. Cock fighting was presented as a 'normal' pastime. It did focus on an area of the world that not a lot of movies are made about, so it is fairly unique.

The story and acting of this movie is excellent. However, call me unsophisticated but the randomness of the scenes is a turn off for me. I would love to see a cut of the movie with all the scenes in chronological order. Penn, Watts, and Del Torro all are extraordinary. I just think the story could have held up on its own without the tricky flashbacks and foreshadowing. The movie has no real beginning, middle and end as you the scenes seem to be on 'shuffle' all the time. However I would recommend it to anyone that can handle something out of the ordinary with powerful acting. You really ended up caring about the characters. I give it 6 out of 10.

I thought I would like this movie since I like character study movies. It just harps on on the main theme of the movie, that Dave is a complete wimp who is deathly afraid of confrontation, almost every scene conveys this. We really don't end up learning much about the wife other than she likes being in the opera and she is having an affair. I would have liked to seen both characters developed not just the same basic same theme in every scene. I guess I learned that I don't like Campbell Scott as an actor or at least in this role he was very grating. Denis Leary is pretty good in the movie as the 'macho, typical guy' character. He is the exact opposite of Scott's character. There was some hinting of a flirtation with Scott and his dental assistant that really goes nowhere. Its worth watching if you like 'one note' character movies but not for me.