What a strange movie...

Rating: 6/10 (3 December 2004)

How do I describe this? The movie features terrific performances by Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Natalie Portman, and not much of a performance by Julia Roberts, who seems to have mailed in her performance.
It's all above love at first sight not being enough. Law's character, who should be the winner, ends up the loser. His entire world is a lie, as he discovers at the end of the movie. He's a terribly dislikeable fellow, and so is Clive Owen's character.
Roberts seems to have sleep-walked through this movie, which I really don't get. Natalie Portman is all grown up--she plays an ingenue who happens to be a stripper and a liar. She's the muse that drives Law, who turns his back on her.
Mike Nichols is a brilliant director. That much is clear. The problem, though, is that I still don't know precisely what this movie was supposed to be about other than as a study of human immorality.
The performances are largely worth seeing, but the story is muddled. I gave it a 6.