Some movies are disappointing right from the beginning. They start cheap, they continue cheap, you don't want to know more about the story or the characters, and you turn off after 30 minutes.
This movie is different. It starts rather good. Halle Berry is beautiful, interesting in her face and as her character. A murder happens, we want to know who it was. We enjoy the classy ambiance of the advertising agency, the restaurants, the fashion. The relationships between the characters makes us curious which directions the relationships will take. Bruce Willis, likable and smart, with the vices of a successful womanizer. I was still into the story after about 1 1/2 hours! But then it happens: Everyone of the important characters starts to reveal more and more tragic entanglements, weird obsessions, strange pasts, and mean streaks, more and weirder (a) than is humanly possible and (b) than fit into a two-hour movie or a viewer's heart. Even worse, these newly revealed secrets do not fit the characters, seem just artificially and arbitrarily added on. The characters begin to lose credibility. At this point, I stopped to identify with and lost interest in them. The story fell apart. The end was neither intellectually nor emotionally satisfying, leaving the viewer with a bad aftertaste.
If the makers had not tried to be too clever by putting twist upon twist upon twists into this thriller, but had just let the characters' natural development guide them, it could have been a good movie.
This movie is different. It starts rather good. Halle Berry is beautiful, interesting in her face and as her character. A murder happens, we want to know who it was. We enjoy the classy ambiance of the advertising agency, the restaurants, the fashion. The relationships between the characters makes us curious which directions the relationships will take. Bruce Willis, likable and smart, with the vices of a successful womanizer. I was still into the story after about 1 1/2 hours! But then it happens: Everyone of the important characters starts to reveal more and more tragic entanglements, weird obsessions, strange pasts, and mean streaks, more and weirder (a) than is humanly possible and (b) than fit into a two-hour movie or a viewer's heart. Even worse, these newly revealed secrets do not fit the characters, seem just artificially and arbitrarily added on. The characters begin to lose credibility. At this point, I stopped to identify with and lost interest in them. The story fell apart. The end was neither intellectually nor emotionally satisfying, leaving the viewer with a bad aftertaste.
If the makers had not tried to be too clever by putting twist upon twist upon twists into this thriller, but had just let the characters' natural development guide them, it could have been a good movie.
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