"The perfect marriage of science and beauty. Impossible."

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2018)

I didn't know if there was even the slightest chance this was based on a true history so I searched for the name of Nicolo Bussotti and learned that the character in the movie was fictitious, although parts of the red violin's origins WAS based on the life of Antonio Stradivari who lived during the era that opened the story. I rather enjoyed this picture and the way it traced the violin's history through the centuries, along with the tarot card gimmick that introduced each of the major turning points in the instrument's history. Most of the narrative appeared to fit historically, although I did have to laugh when the Oxford violinist Pope (Jason Flemyng) declared his lustful desire for Lady Victoria (Greta Scacchi) by stating "I feel a composition coming on". That was just such a concession to modern dialog that it disrupted the continuity of the scene for me. I'm still chuckling about it.
What I wasn't prepared for in the story was it's twist finale, given Charles Morritz's (Samuel L. Jackson) scholarly and professional approach to determining the violin's authenticity. As the instrument's restorer (Don McKellar) proclaims that "This is the single most perfect acoustic machine I have ever seen", there's still no indication that the pair would conspire to pull off the crime of the century. The film's ending with Morritz making a clean getaway rivaled the revelation made regarding another Samuel Jackson character, that of Elijah Price, in a movie that came out just a couple years after this one titled "Unbreakable". He was even a collector of sorts in that movie too.