Overlong and boring melting pot of several different movies

Rating: 1/10 (24 July 2010)

I really wanted to like this morning but it was the first one since Mr Magoo that I have felt like walking out of! I had a feeling of having seen it all before during this movie - I was constantly thinking of Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come where his wife is trapped in purgatory and also Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. By the end we were all waiting for it to end in my group and comments when filing out of the cinema in Australia were much the same from the rest of the crowd. It actually feels like a nightmare which I guess is what the director intended. On the upside it had a fantastic all star cast but they struggled to make this mess coherent. Cillian Murphy - still waiting to hit the Hollywood big time he deserves - tried his best with his limited script but he really needs a better part than this. The music was quite jarring all the way through, and sounds near identical to DiCaprio's last movie; the much better Shutter Island. The constant strings with trumpet bellows are meant to add tension, but after you hear the same sequence of music for over two hours it gets a little annoying to say the least. I am sorry; I wanted to love it but it ended up being baffling by the plot and painfully boring to watch.