Marlon Brando RUINED this movie!

Rating: 5/10 (8 May 2006)

I saw it for the first time over the weekend, and I must say that Marlon's idiotic behavior off screen (showing up not knowing his lines, fat, drunk, and unwilling to cooperate) are totally OBVIOUS in the movie. The whole flow of the movie stalls and his random, incoherent babbling make so little sense that it's all you can do to keep from falling asleep at that point. The close ups and lighting are so different than the rest of the movie that it's obvious something had gone horribly wrong at that point. It's supposed to be a slow decent into madness, but the momentum slams into a brick wall when Marlon appears on screen. Martin Sheen's spectacular performance is overshadowed by Marlon's retarded banter. Even if you liked the movie up to that point (which I did), by the time Marlon is done, you almost forget how great the rest of the movie is and just want to scrape red hot forks across your eyeballs and jam Q-tips through your eardrums so you never have to experience those end scenes again.