Flagellating albino gave best performance

Rating: 2/10 (21 July 2008)

Missed this due to traveling when it played first-run, and hadn't caught it until just recently.
What a disappointment. I know the subject matter and settings demanded a significant amount of filming in dim light -- but holy hell!!!! - with his "A-list" status as a director, and everything else about this flick also in the same top category - I got the feeling that Ron Howard had run-out of money for light bulbs.
With folks like Hanks, McKellen and Tautou, each with credentials in the acting profession at the top in his/her own nation - their collective performances could have been equaled by a trio of weirdos in a John Waters opus. Hanks and Tautou moved and delivered lines like a pair of postal workers who had overdosed on Valium.
The best acting and most interesting character was the albino, psychotic religious fanatic, loosening and tightening the cilice around his thigh, proceeding to flagellate himself, and belting an elderly nun like Joe Pesci stomping a rival in "Goodfellas." If somebody totally unfamiliar with the U.S. film industry were told Tom Hanks is considered by many to be its top actor, and by virtually everybody to be on the shortest of "A" lists - and then exposed only to this performance, he'd think whoever conveyed this information to be insane.