Waste of Time and Energy

Rating: 7/10 (31 October 2006)

!!CONTAINS SPOLERS!!! One of the worst films I have seen in a while. Multiple mean-spirited characters doing nasty things to one another for over two hours does not constitute a good story. The only message I could possibly see here was that mean poor people should triumph over mean rich people. There was not one character that I felt any sympathy or empathy for by the end of the film. They all double crossed each other and sold each other out repeatedly. On top of that, the film makers double crossed the audience, by strategically leaving things out only to reveal the true facts of various interactions later on just to fool the viewer. How could anyone walk away from this feeling even okay, much less good, about the film? The high rating it is getting is an absolute amazement to me. The trend in films now seems to be if you can have enough screwy twists to keep the audience thinking about the twists, character development, moral lessons, decent plots and story lines don't need to exist. This really took off with "The Sixth Sense" (which was actually a pretty decent movie)and continues to be the trend. There have been a few good films with interesting plot twists but the popularity of misdirection just for its own sake has gotten completely out of hand.
I wish the movie going public would stop rewarding these kind of lame efforts and pay more attention to the important elements of story telling. Like having at least one or more characters that you can empathize with at least a little bit. Or things like a story that doesn't have to have some bizarre deus ex machina to make it work.
I may be living in a fantasy world, but one can at least hope.
UPDATE 05-29-2008 - I like the actors in this film so much I gave it a second chance. Going in with lowered expectations after my first viewing helped, and I actually found myself enjoying the journey of the characters. The story itself is actually not bad just ambigous. I have to admit, even though I don't exaclty love this movie, it was not as bad as I initlially thought. Still not one I would highly recommend, but alright for late night cable TV fare.