The depth of this film is ankle deep - unrealistic, poorly written waste of talent.

Rating: 3/10 (3 September 2010)

I watch a LOT of films (on average 1 a day) and I'd been told about this one for years so felt like there was a big gap in my movie knowledge. Even are the first 15 minutes I felt the sense of impending doom. There are so many quick cut edits of pills flying into peoples mouths, a TV being turned on, a pupil dilating. I thought, OK, maybe they've just come out of film school and this is still a 'neat' tool to them. By the end of the film you've seen these edits repeated ad nauseam for no further impact. If you think this sort of thing is clever then you're probably one of the people that gave this movie a 10. The thing that annoyed me the most about this film is the story - essentially the film is about drug abuse. Thats it, there's no other sub plots or 'place to get to', so you'd think that a film that gives itself a tiny premise would then dig right down into the complexities of drug abuse, perhaps make it a character examination because drug abuse is an incredibly complicated subject. Nope, you never know why these people become addicts, you never feel anything for them because you no nothing about them about from the fact they are drug addicts, nothing about their life outside of taking drugs is shown. This is not the real world! Most of people in western society have taken drugs at some stage growing up and many still do - they don't all become junkies. And the ones that do become junkies don't have their arms chopped off, become prostitutes or go to mental homes. The makers of this film has an opportunity to show how drug abuse really works in society but decided to take the easy route and make a 'Gosh, drugs are bad!' commercial. If only they could've spent 5 minutes giving some characters some depth I might have cared about what happened to them but I guess we're not supposed to care about them because they took drugs. So they're just bad people right. Do yourself a favour and watch Train Spotting instead - it's still a drug movie that pulls no punches but they bother to actually put a story in there for the viewers too and show that drugs don't always lead to addiction and that most junkies aren't just junkies: each one is a complex individual and thats how they should be portrayed. Shame on you Requiem for Dream.