Don't Believe the Hype

Rating: 8/10 (3 September 2007)

I went into the movie expecting it to be as good as the critics (and a lot of people) had said. Alfrenso Cuaron is a great director, if you have seen Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkahban and Yu Mama Tu Tambien (which I really want to see). I knew he could make anything interesting and captivating.
This movie isn't it.
It does have its moments of brilliance: the opening scene is amazing. You feel you are seeing a documentary rather than a movie and you are seeing it right as it happens. The scene in the countryside where Julian (Julianne Moore) is shot and killed captures the intensity and is very realistic as well. I especially dug the scene where Thom (Clive Owen) is being driven to his cousin's mansion in time to King Crimson's "In The Court of Crimson King." It becomes almost Kubrick like and like something Stanley Kubrick would do.
Yet, I found myself not really caring about the characters or the story at all. Thom has to help a pregnant girl escape. Why? We don't really know. The pregnant girl is very hostile to Thom and inexplicably warms up to him and becomes his friend by the end of the movie. The "Human Project" is not seen nor explained further beyond what other people say about it. Julian's vigilante group changes their stance very quickly and seems to double-cross Thom more than once (although if I were kidnapped, I doubt very seriously I would trust my one-time kidnappers) without explanation. They want to use the baby for 'political reasons'? Why? Why is almost the entire movie not explained or understood like this? Not only that, but the protagonist in Thom is VERY one-dimensional. We get that he is cynical about life and thinks his life is sh*t and I went into the movie expecting him to progress as a character. Instead, I felt he just wandered with the girl and escaped but that was it.
I hope sincerely that the creators of the movie did set out to craft a story instead of the uninteresting mess I saw. I really wanted to like this movie; what kept me going was to see how well Cuaron would depict the scenes and the hand-held/documentary style of the film. I sorta wish the ending was a big reveal and the "Human Project" knew of the girl's existence all along. Instead, we got the awful ending we got. I guess Thom's life was sh*t after all.
And so was this movie.