Brad Pitt strikes again!

Rating: Null/10 (1 January 2001)

Brad Pitt kills this movie. The movie is slow, it's long, it's almost silent, but those aren't necessarily movie-killers. No, to really kill a movie, you have to get the leading role completely, utterly wrong - like here.
It's basically a remake of the old movie "Death Takes a Holiday", where Death assumes human form, and falls in love. The old movie was from the early days of sound and consequently clumsily made, but had a gothic romanticism that makes it still worth watching. The new version tries for a bit of the same, and came close in some places, but you can't do Gothic Romanticism with a blank like Brad Pitt at the center of the film. It could have been a good film with a decent leading actor, the director had the courage to try for the kind of stillness and quiet that makes the smallest nuances seem vital (a la "The Innocents" or "The Sixth Sense"), and for stretches of the film it actually works. It does get you to actually get into the relationships between the characters, the silence really does draw you in - when it works.
But some actors can't stand that kind of scrutiny - Brad Pitt being one. Death was written as having a mix of utter innocence (new to humanity and all that) and terrible depths - which HAD to be played by an actor who's at least capable of registering feeling in a close-up! For this movie to work at all the endless close-ups needed to be fascinating - we needed to watch the thoughts, feelings, and depths playing through Death's eyes. But neither thoughts, feelings, nor depths play through Pitt's eyes, nothing plays through Pitt's eyes, except a vague awareness that he looks good. All the close-ups of Brad looking clueless (the closest he can come to innocent) do not fascinate, instead he looks deeply stupid!
If you want to see a good movie with Death as a character don't see this, see "The Seventh Seal" or the original "Death Takes a Holiday" or Woody Allen's "Love and Death"... or even "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" Â– which is a way better movie than this.