Brilliant writing, a work that comes within an inch of true greatness.

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2009)

This film walks in its own way, and with the exception of one or two alcoves or nooks and crannies, it walks along new roads and byways.
I wanted so strongly to give this picture 10 out of 10, but it was spoiled by two very silly and deeply regrettable scenes. I say regrettable, because they were so foolishly overlooked, and so easily fixable, that I can never imagine why they were allowed to remain in the finished product. One could have been omitted altogether, the other re shot very simply. The first is the lunatic scene with the so called overweight American tourists, this was like a bad moment in Screwballs or Dumb and Dumber, and should never have happened at all, given that it did happen, it would not have harmed the story in any way to have committed it to the canvas bag or to the cutting room floor. The second regrettable scene was in the restaurant, when, for some reason best known to the director, the direction takes on an amateur theatrical or painting by numbers technique. She exits to go to the ladies room, he blows smoke and an arrogant diner complains, he snaps it and calls the diner by inviting him to repeat his complaint, this leads to an over injection of testosterone on both sides, they stand, punches are thrown, and the hero decks the diner, his date then swings a bottle and he decks her, the table breaks away, as many a card table did in the old westerns, and both decked characters remain decked, she returns from ladies room (right on cue)just in time to clock the situation; to this point, nobody has stopped eating, the waiters are all out the back having a smoke, and the restaurant manager has gone for a Pee, or is taking a shower in the next building, because nobody attempts to stop the fight, or even pay it the slightest attention. In order to avoid any further collapse in the suspension of disbelief, the director cuts to "exterior night two" and the couple out in the street walking away from the restaurant. The time that would have been saved by cutting the Fat Tourist scene, could well have been used to support the utterly unbelievable restaurant scene.
Such a shame, because the film is a beauty, and the combined efforts of all concerned in this production, have provided the world with a work of nearly true greatness.
Regards, Dracher