Nice movie, but the "twist" effect is growing a beard

Rating: 7/10 (23 August 2008)

I liked this movie in that it's a nice story with interesting characters, beautiful imagery and decent actors. But like many other movies in the last years, this movie has a surprising plot twist at the end. In this movie I didn't particularly like it, and probably for two reasons. The first and main one is, the whole "plot twist" thing is getting rather old if you ask me. We've seen so many of these movies lately (The Sixth Sense, The Others, The Village, The Usual Suspects, Memento, The Illusionist, The Score, Unbreakable, etc. etc.) that it doesn't really impress anymore. Oh sure, it's nice to catch the viewers by surprise and say "Ha! You didn't see that coming, did you?" But then again, is it really that hard? In a world where the viewer is *expected* to "suspend his disbelief" and the writer has all the power to either show or not show information, you can make your viewers believe anything. In the beginning, or at least what was the beginning of this "genre" for me (The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects), it was still funny and unexpected. You felt tricked and kinda stupid when you learned the truth. But the more of these films you see, the more you realize how easy it is to surprise someone if you have absolute control over what information is or isn't shown. And, the more far-fetched the plot twists seem to get, which is the 2nd reason I wasn't really impressed by the ending of this film. It seems to have become a silly game among film makers much like the game in this film: a match to see who is best able to trick their audience, and who can come up with an even more insane plot twist. In this case it is insane indeed, or rather an insult the viewers intelligence if you want my opinion. Sure, just pull a proverbial bunny out of a hat by the end of the film like "Hey, what about THIS then eh?". Yeah, unexpected indeed, but cheap, really cheap. As someone else commented on this film: the makers seem to have worried more about delivering the best plot twist to date, than about making a good film, and executing the twist properly and credibly. Half way through the film, I was no longer really bothered by the issue that, at the end of the film, the plot twist appeared to offer a solution for. Part of this is because my "suspension of disbelief" had pushed the whole issue to the background. And part of it is because the film just doesn't keep you focused. There's so much other stuff going on that you aren't really sure what to look for. At a certain point I was waiting for unexpected answers when I didn't know what the question was.
Nevertheless, I still gave this film a 7 out of 10, because in itself I thought it was a good story and I enjoyed watching most of it. However I do hope that film makers will invent a new genre and stop doing the plot twist thing because frankly, I think we've all seen how that trick works by now so it isn't really going to work anymore.