Crude cardboard caricature

Rating: Null/10 (9 April 2001)

With all the awards listed I bought this, and managed to get about 35 minutes into it before giving up and heaving it into the bin, which gave me more satisfaction than the preceding 35 minutes. Extremely crude story, script, and crude poorly drawn characters. Not one character to feel any empathy or sympathy with. Drowning in mud would be appropriate for these entirely unrepresentative and by no means credible caricatures of persons. American Beauty??? American yes, but there is nothing even remotely beautiful about this coarse and dark nightmare. I would have killed the hero after 35 minutes of his vacuous pointless floundering about. Very poor film- rent before you buy. You probably won't want to watch it twice. If this is what wins Oscars and Baftas and all the rest the cinema industry is in a mess. Fortunately there are much better films coming from the independents and foreign film makers.