Unrelenting, affecting and stays with you

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2013)

After I'd finished watching this movie I had to get some air as I felt truly drained. I had seen a few reviews of this movie beforehand and so was eager to see if this movie could possibly live up to those reviews. I'm not so pleased to say that it did. I say not pleased because this movie hit me hard. I was watching a film about addiction, both physical and emotional with characters I really should not care about, with maybe the exception of Sarah (Ellen Burnstein in excellent form). But we are slowly introduced into their seedy and needy lives but once we are pulled in we are not let go as slowly all the main characters' lives start to unravel before us and we feel everything. It's ugly, dirty, nasty and seedy and that's just how I felt as the credits rolled and it was all done without the need (in general anyway) for gratuitous scenes of drug taking, sex or violence (Okay there is a particularly graphic scene towards the end involving Jennifer Connelly but it is spliced between scenes of all the other there characters and so lessens the explicitness of it). This works more on an emotional level and it plays with your emotions so much you cannot help but be affected after. This is not a movie to sit with friends over a tub of popcorn. I would even go as far to say it is a movie better watched alone to feel it's full impact. Just don't expect not to be affected afterwards. Don't think my score of 8 out of 10 is not high. It is. 8 represents a great movie for me. A movie would have to be something extra special to get a 9 and total perfection to get a 10 and as far as I'm concerned that doesn't exist yet. This isn't a movie for everyone but if you want to feel moved in some way then this is a movie for you