A Modest Surprise

Rating: Null/10 (27 February 2007)

I took my daughter to this as she rather enjoys Gothic movies. Based on the reviews, I was not expecting much. However, there is some octane in the cast and directing, so I hoped for production values. What the picture turns out to be is an extremely 'plotty' yarn about a man lost in the maze of his own history. A lot of the exposition involves the hero recounting the plot of a novel he's reading - this was done extremely effectively, and hats off to Schumacher for the technique.
As for the rest, it's all story - and if you are interested simply in a narrative unfolding simply for the fun of finding out what happens next, it's not bad at all. At any rate, I had fun with it, and I did not expect to.