Shallow and predictable

Rating: 4/10 (4 April 2007)

Ouch! For all that this film promises, I got way more of a surprise seeing the rating it has on this site than anything I saw in the film itself.
The respectable cast do what they can with their bland, boring characters, and the setting is beautiful, but that wasn't nearly enough to keep me interested. An hour or so into the film, I knew how it was going to turn out, and I didn't really care. By the end, I was downright annoyed. I didn't build up enough compassion for the 'hero' and 'heroine' and I didn't dislike the villain enough to justify where the film sees them end up. Don't get me wrong, the villain was evil enough, but the reasons we're given to hate him seemed to be thought up and thrown in with clichéd subtext and a few clichéd scenes at the last minute and some of the decisions he makes later in the film are inconsistent with earlier parts. Maybe I'm a sucker for the bad guy, but I just ended up feeling sorry for him and I guess it's because of that I didn't end up liking the good guys. There's no character development here. Biel's character is insipid, shallow and annoying and Norton does his job well but seems bored most of the way through. Giamatti is as good as ever but his character is at times annoyingly inconsistent too. Sewell didn't have much to work with. If you want to see him as a much better villain in a much better film, see A Knight's Tale.
I was expecting this film to grab me a lot more than it did, but it turned out to be more of a disappointment than anything else.