Great make up, cinematography, poor direction, casting and horrible editing

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2009)

Firstly, it was brilliant to see set design and make-up of the highest class and that should be applauded but the actual film was a short story padded out for around 3 hours such that much of the movie is in fact, very boring. Before I take the positives in the movie itself, there are two aspects that both ruin the film and more importantly, increase the running time by around an hour.
Firstly, the casting of Tilda Swinton is just awful. I can appreciate the reasons why the director wanted her in the movie, she's beautiful, and a great actress, but, after likely rejecting her in favour of Cate Blanchett, should have waited for another film before hiring Swinton instead of giving her a completely inconsequential part that has no substance and has no impact on the story.
Secondly, the constant reverting back to the lead in the hospital re-counting the story. This kind of scenario has been played out hundreds of times before, and much better. In these sequences, the film simply meanders to nowhere in particular before you are transported back in time. The meandering sequences in the hospital conservatively last around 20 minutes which could easily have been done in 2 or 3 minutes with better dialogue.
Both of these facets of the film almost completely ruined the film for me but that is not to say the film doesn't have its redeeming features.
Firstly, the film does a very nice job of approaching Hurricane Katrina in a way that is oblique but at the same time handles the upcoming devastation with some very good handiwork from the camera.
Secondly, Brad Pitt's performance is great. He loves his accents (a la Snatch) and he's up for it here too, but as someone said earlier, his character simply isn't likable enough to be overly sympathetic with him although there are some real comedic moments and these are done well.
To sum up, it's an overly long film with several great moments, it's not Oscar winning material by any means (as a picture, it is Oscar-material as far as a costume drama goes) but it is reasonable and that is well above the Hollywood average.