A good movie, but not Best Picture

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2004)

First off I liked this movie. Can't say I loved it or plan to see it again. But it was good. But at the same time it's not worthy of the Oscar-buzz it's been receiving either. It painted a lot of pretty and pretty awful pictures, but in the end I really didn't feel emotionally attached to the two lead characters. I just felt like everything surrounding them was contrived, even the end. For me what resonated the most were the other stories, especially that of Natalie Portman's character...that was real heartbreak. Kidman was fine as usual and so was Law, but again the suffering that others around them had to endure seemed so much more that in the end I felt a bit flat about them.
A good movie, but not great.