I feel somewhat cheated...

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2001)

I saw this movie after reading and hearing rave reviews for it, and I must admit that I was disappointed. I paid too much attention to its supposedly-confusing details after some of my friends (and printed reviews) told me the goings-on were murky, I was led to believe that if I blinked I'd miss out on something that might have been important.
(The following could be considered to be spoiling, so be prepared!) It is unfortunate I had been "informed" about this movie like I had, and here is why: the ending raps up its precedings perfectly, the whole thing has no ambiguity to it whatsoever like some people have been saying it does. Lenny's (he being the main character) tale ultimately turns out to be a psychologically- rather than a physically-based one, and I was let down because that felt somewhat cheap to me. I got to the end and received something I didn't really care about, it (he?) just wasn't very interesting. Simply chalk that up to my personal taste?
As I think about it more, to a certain and perhaps large degree I felt the way I did due to my unmet expectations, but still, even w/o the ones I had I would say that the story was unsatisfyingly executed. It is rather hard for truly rewarding films which use characters' deep psychologies as their real subjects to be made in my opinion, and this one didn't quite pull it off, not even close actually. For one thing I think too much effort was spent on being "clever" with its method of storytelling-in-reverse instead of trying to be compelling in legitimate ways, say by having characters with more depth: all in all I considered it to be a slightly above-average B-movie. So, after pondering the movie a bit I give it a 6 after my initial response of 7.