Kudos to all who gave this movie a negative review...

Rating: 1/10 (25 February 1999)

And my pity to all those out there who can't help but rave about this. It's quite clear that this film is either one you love or hate, but one point to make is that it does not depend on the person who watches it. Be it a child, an American, or someone from Europe, there's no such determination, which is as prejudiced as the people who commented earlier, as to "why someone would or would not like it." It really disgusts me when someone says you don't like a movie because you're "American" or that you "did not understand it." I understood this burnt piece of money dung of a movie really well; The thing I don't understand is why it is loved by so many people...
It seems whenever I ask someone why they liked this, I never get a reasonable answer. Just because this was a filmization from a (Michael Ondjante) romance novel does not neccesarily make it a good movie. A novel and a movie are two different things. I, personally, am not a fan of the "lovers-broken-apart" genre, but that is not why I loathed the tripe. I loathed this film simply because it was an overlong, over hyped, unsympathetic piece of grunge with no admiral protagonist. If it was based on a novel by Tom Wolfe, Clive Barker, or Anne Rice it would still make no difference to me whatsoever.
There was NO point to this crap. What was beautiful about it? The fact they filmed scenes of deserts? The fact it was about an amoral man who has an affair with his best friend's wife, get's burned up in a place crash and rambles to a nurse about what happened? What most don't understand is just because a movie is about love and romance, does not make it good. Would you find this film beautiful if it was about two race sumpremacy people having an affair? There's a question you might want to answer. The whole idea of that plot nuance makes me grimace and puke.
There was no chemistry whatsoever, Ralph Fiennes looked about as wooden, stiff and emotionless as a horse in a pose of rigor mortis, Thomas looked as if she had consumed prozac when she was premenstrual. They were not beautiful, Fiennes was portrayed as an evil spy who sells out to the Nazis, and Thomas played a cold flaky woman committing adultery.
I was jealous of the people who sat next to me in the theater and got their money refunded just because they had known someone who worked in the theater. In that sense, yes. Otherwise, no. Well done, no.
The only other noticeable credit of the director (Anthony Minghella) was Truly Madly Deeply. I was scratching my head as to how and why such a big time magnate like Saul Zaentz would work with such a no-name. Unfortunately, I don't know why it is and how that happened. If I knew, I would be very rich.
When Zaentz entered the stage gloating at what the ignorance of the Academy did for him, I imagined that he would go home that night, snicker, and think how some people's stupidity could mean another person's benefit. If you did so many great films in the past, you're bound to be smart and feature a new project to the public without any complaints, right?
This movie has the relevance and value of a watery bowel movement after it just came out of the toaster oven. It would have made no difference if the film was actually about that.
If you haven't already seen it, avoid this movie at all costs. You'll be doing yourself a very big favor.