Outstanding with one exception.

Rating: 7/10 (18 August 2005)

I'm fully willing to admit that this is a really remarkable script. I'm also fully willing to admit that every actor in this film did an absolutely amazing job. I've always been a Clive Owen fan, but this is just above and beyond. Portman too. And Roberts. And Law. Ah, heck, everybody was great.
However, didn't anybody think the ending was... well, bad? I was locked into the film for the entirety, right up until the slap. Then, for no reason, they put in a hokey slow-motion sequence. After that, I have no real complaints, except that the significance of Alice's (or rather, Jane's) fraudulent identity is not explored to the extent it should be.
The stage play has an entire scene with Larry, Anna, and Dan in Postman's Park where they discover Alice's memorial and talk about why she might have made herself up. It provides much better closure to the viewer and there's no schmaltzy slow-motion. About the slow-motion: the slap is about the characters, not about the action itself. This is once again something that worked better in the stage play. No possibility of adding slow-mo to a play. It maintains a focus on the interaction between Dan and Alice and not on actions themselves. It's not the slap, it's the fact that he slapped her.
I know, I know: you can't compare the stage to the screen, they're two different media. I know this already. All I'm saying is, they could have adapted it in a manner that retained at least some semblance of the retrospective atmosphere in the stage play. And the slow-mo slap? Talk about a complete mood-ruiner! Other than that, amazing movie.