Mixed, but quite seductive, bag

Rating: 7/10 (31 May 1999)

Meet Joe Black is in many ways a wonderful movie. It is grandly, shamelessly romantic in a way few movies these days dare to be, and quite successful on that level. Brad Pitt is certainly one of our best contemporary leading romantic men, and the lovely Claire Forlani is utterly compelling, both as love interest, and as daughter to the film's real star, the incomparable Anthony Hopkins.
In an age where we've come to expect virtuosic acting to club us over the head, a al Nicholson, DeNiro, Pacino, and Streep, Hopkins is a subtle master without peer. His greatest praise was for Silence of the Lambs, but his greatest role was in Remains of the Day, in which he expressed an astonishing depth of pain, solitude, and character with very few words or even over gestures and expressions. In Meet Joe Black, Hopkins gives us another magnificently etched, subtly towering performance. The theme is old and timeless: a man coming to terms with his life and imminent death. Hopkins makes it more than compelling.
In tandem, both he and Forlani, and he and Marcia Gay Harden (as his less-favored daughter) create remarkably believable and beautiful father-daughter relationships. I think it is in these areas that the film is most successful (I speak as the father of two daughters myself).
The film is a bit too long, and at times the writing betrays itself with a lack of subtlety. Also, while Pitt is marvelous in the Lead Romantic Male part of his role, he is not a particularly menacing Death. At times, particularly in scenes next to the Towering Hopkins, he seems positively puny.
But let yourself get swept away by this film, forgive it's couple of flaws, and you'll be enormously entertained.