The people who called this a 'thinking' movie - haven't done much of it

Rating: 2/10 (13 April 2007)

This movie was a good period piece - with remarkable attention to detail. The acting was all well above par. Some nice commentary on the times and there were even some real gems of dialog here and there. i.e. "...and the rest of you are just visiting" was great but these don't make the 2h40min trip worth it.
I really can't believe how many people want to malign the intelligence of people who didn't like this movie. This is NOT a thinking persons film. The so-called 'twists' were telegraphed by half an hour. The sons betrayal was so incredibly obvious it was hilarious.
Which brings us to the two other plot problems - completely unnecessary scenes - the entire arc about the fathers note didn't advance the plot, didn't develop the character significantly (How could it since it was resolved at the end) and didn't contain any interesting information! "Don't lie to your friends" - OOOhhh wisdom for the AGES! The next bit is leaving plot points unresolved. Now I get that in a franchise it's hip to do this since they become hooks for your next film. However I doubt we are looking at "The Good Sheppard II : Black Sheep Rising" any time soon. I also understand that you might want to leave a point or two deliberately ambiguous. Ambiguity is a great tool for communicating several things at once.
However leaving dozens of plot points unresolved comes off as lazy and pretending that by leaving them out you are raising the intellectual bar is about as ingenuous as removing pieces from a jigsaw and labeling them with "Only intelligent people can complete this!" This could be part of a more general rant about how many movie/TV/comic writers "fake" intelligence by being obscure.
Scriptwriters repeat after me - "Feeling smug about communicating badly isn't the same thing as being smart!".
A good counter-example is the movie Primer. Sure it was hard to many people to follow but enough information is there to resolve all the major plot points.
If you like this movie fine, if you didn't fine but calling it "intelligent" is unjustifiable.