Great Idea, Bad Execution

Rating: 5/10 (4 March 2007)

I can't believe Roger Ebert and the Academy rate this movie so highly--and IMDb users, for that matter. This movie about people succumbing to or overcoming racism strikes a chord a couple times, but only if the viewer is willing to suspend judgment for very long periods of contrived plot machinations that get you to these key points. (One could be much less charitable and say that simply the whole movie falls flat, for how on earth could one be moved by these key moments when they were so falsely set up?) It seemed to me that the entire film, though set up in the in-vogue style of the interweaving plot, was an endless string of caricatures, and downright impossible coincidences if you add them all up together.
Bottom line: how can you have a relevant social commentary, if the movie is constructed of unrealistic events and actions?? It all rings false for me. Still I give it a 5/10 for those key moments.