Ungraceful and annoyingly sluggish rendition of a touching story.

Rating: 4/10 (21 June 2008)

A touching story of contemporary tragedy is a great concept.
Sadly, this film just doesn't translate such a story well enough, failing in various areas so strongly that it managed to ruin the entire film's feeling for me.
The story progresses with a sluggish pace, and unwarranted jumps too often, detract from continuity.
Often, I felt the film was trying to force me to feel something, rather than immersing me in its story.
Often you are exposed to drama that seems to try to shock you, or move you in some way, but at the time it is out of context, then the film (ungracefully) jumps back to give context to the drama.
The characters gain context via these unwarranted jumps as well. But the film does not convey the feeling, forcing you to follow these jumps to tie everything together in the very end.
And even though the ending sequence is very touching and memorable, a lot of potential with very well rendered scenes, very nice acting just goes to waste through the sluggish story pace and the unwarranted jumps, forward, backward, true, false, better, worse.
In the end, I felt as if I had been bombarded with a sequence of incoherent feelings that just didn't tie up with the end result. Rather than drawing me in to suffer and feel next to the characters of the story, I felt empty and distanced from them instead, and felt sad that so much great potential was wasted with this film.