Self-sure Misfire

Rating: 3/10 (29 January 2008)

This film has been continuously praised as being 'adult' and 'realistic'. Firstly I might point out that the demographic breakdown on this site of viewer's ratings for this film shows that whilst the average rating overall is 7.4, amongst under 18s it is 8.1 and this figure gradually goes down with each successive age group so that over 45s give it an average rating of 6.8. Not perhaps the breakdown one would expect from such an adult film.
Of course the above does suggest that people by and large like this. This mystifies me and I can only think that perhaps people want to like it precisely so they can think of themselves as more mature, adult and realistic for doing so - a feeling typically stronger in under-18s with a maturity-related inferiority complex and less prevalent in people who few would suggest are immature - over 45s. Whatever the case, my own thoughts on the film are this: If this is realistic then happiness must be damned near impossible to achieve. Indeed this movie depicts such despicable characters so consistently doing despicable things that each plot twist becomes utterly predictable once the film is about 1/3 through. A viewer can count on things turning out for the worst in every situation that arises and sure enough this is what happens.
It is an empty, barren and depressing film. As far as I recall the four main characters were the sum total of all the speaking parts in the movie, something I believe was primarily responsible for the aforesaid barren feeling that pervaded everything. The movie also has an unfortunate tendency to leap suddenly months or years in advance without any particular warning and in the end this, rather than giving an entertaining survey of the characters' severely dysfunctional lives, instead gives a viewer the feeling of watching a horrendously prolonged montage. The rushed pace with which it moves along, the inhuman coldness of the characters in their dealings with another and the consequent impossibility of actually engaging with them or sympathising with them leave the viewer not really caring what happens to them. Certainly one begins to know whatever it is it will be bad anyway. In short: there's no particular point to watching the film at all.
Now it does have a few (very few) redeeming features. Firstly Clive Owen is perhaps the best here and is the only character one might feel vaguely tempted to care about, though even he is required to work from this script and thus is required to try his absolute hardest to be unpleasant. His delivery of the much-quoted line regarding the human heart is perhaps the single finest point in the movie, and really, when you get down to it, the seconds it takes to deliver aren't really worth sitting through this dark, grey blur for.
Julia Roberts is utterly cold and flat and not remotely interesting. Natalie Portman plays a character that is interesting in the opening scenes, but as cold and cruel as is to be expected from this movie shortly after. Jude Law plays Jude Law to begin with before sinking into the same icy, vindictiveness of every other character. Indeed, in truth, there's really only one character in the movie, played by four different actors.
In its efforts to appear realistic and avoid the usual Hollywood happy, overly-optimistic view on human relationships this film viciously veers in the opposite direction, presenting an unhappy, overly-pessimistic view on human relationships. In other words, it's unrealistically negative. The ways in which the characters so rapidly turn on one another is beyond a normal human and ventures into the realm of the psychopathic.
This movie does contain one meaningful exchange, however, between Clive Owen's and Natalie Portman's characters in which Portman states, with regards to a photography exhibition: "It's a bunch of sad strangers, photographed beautifully and all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it's beautiful because that's what they want to see." The irony is, I'm sure she's actually talking about the film.