Cloud Atlas - Nothing is connected

Rating: 3/10 (21 November 2012)

I decided to write this review as an advice to everybody: Don't go to this movie with too high expectations! After hearing about a Tykwer/Wachowski movie, based on a bestseller, reading some favorable reviews and seeing a IMDb score of 8.2 i was really excited to see this movie. As the directors are known for radical story twists, i interpreted far too much into the tagline "Everything is connected". So i sat in the theater for almost three hours, expecting a sci-fi/magic like interaction between the 6 segments, only to be finally disappointed. This totally ruined the movie for me!
Now to the movie itself: The concept of reincarnation/archetypes isn't explored at all and, for me, also didn't seem to matter for storytelling. I just perceived it as "actor recycling". I also found it very boring that the underlying messages of all 6 time levels where the same generic commonplace values: "Slavery/oppression is bad", "Boundaries can be overcome", "Your actions dictate your future" (Seriously!), ... I didn't expect an epiphany, but for me there was nothing even remotely thought provoking.
The acting (in particular Halle Berry) was compelling and generally good, while i found the direction to be too fast paced for this kind of movie. The soundtrack was nice, bur nothing special. I liked the Cloud Atlas Symphony theme and it should have been more prominently integrated into the main score.
So, in a nutshell, i found the movie to be more bland and pseudointellectual than ambitious and it failed to involve me at all.
On a side note: In the German dub i watched, the "post apocalyptic future language" sounded a lot like Jar Jar Binks babble, which was seriously distracting and hurting the seriousness of the movie.