almost good, but not really: too long, too dark, horrible score

Rating: 2/10 (6 September 2001)

There are some excellent scenes in this movie, chilling, moving, brilliant. But it is far too long and the jusxtaposition of events in random chronolobical order doesn't work. The strongest scenes are invariably followed by long, dull, slow moving, darkly lit, introverted characterization, as De Nero tries to pull off something. What that something is remains unclear. The movie fails at penetrating the surface of its intent - see movie description. We really don't come to understand much except that De Nero can smile after 30 years of being lost and betrayed. His final smile borders on ludicrous. The lighting and perhaps the worst musical score imagineable make a shambles of the movie's pace and continuity. It's too long, too poorly edited, and fails to develop the more than a few remarkable scenes and bring us something, anything, beyond random snap shots or old hand held 8mm home movies about some time and some place in the early part of the 20th century. The characters and their stories loose their vitality and are finally unrecognizable.