A racist prison guard begins an affair with the black widow of a prisoner that he recently led to the electric chair.
Halle Berry's dubious Oscar has probably driven half the audience towards this movie blind and I bet a good half of of those I-know-nothings wish they had read the small print. This is a very downbeat movie. I doubt I have ever seen such a pile-on-the-agony plot in all my life. Talk about things going wrong! The writers have taken the whole soap opera textbook of cliches and problems and then dumped them all on two people like a sack of rubbish.
This is really a low budget movie with a plot that wouldn't be out of place in a Hallmark TV feature. Indeed only the sex scenes makes it clear it is not! The kind of project that would sink like a stone without solid pro's infront and behind the camera. Did Berry - third choice according to the producers and this site - really have to cry at the Oscars? Is this really that great a performance technically? We see black women endorsing products, walking down catwalks and even being the richest people on TV, is this really a breakthrough?
I am sure she has cried, screwed, shouted and got drunk in real life - as we all have - so what is so difficult here? Maybe her "sponsors" prevented her from waiting tables in real life, but I am sure even that wasn't a stretch.
Thorton's performance is just as good as Berry's, although it is rather Kevin Cosner like in being over-the-top polite and attentive after he has fallen in love. Amazing how quickly people can change habits of a lifetime in movies.
(If screenwriters wrote about Hitler surviving the war they would have him seeing the error of his ways and helping build the Israeli state. Probably having been done a good turn by a blind Jew or something!)
I am glad I saw this movie, but I was left with a feeling of so-what? Too many people are dead that I didn't know well enough to feel anything about. The principle characters haven't done anything that warrants my respect other than surviving a whole pile of problems. What happens next - is this a happy ever after story? Couldn't tell you and - quite frankly my dear - I couldn't give a damn...
Halle Berry's dubious Oscar has probably driven half the audience towards this movie blind and I bet a good half of of those I-know-nothings wish they had read the small print. This is a very downbeat movie. I doubt I have ever seen such a pile-on-the-agony plot in all my life. Talk about things going wrong! The writers have taken the whole soap opera textbook of cliches and problems and then dumped them all on two people like a sack of rubbish.
This is really a low budget movie with a plot that wouldn't be out of place in a Hallmark TV feature. Indeed only the sex scenes makes it clear it is not! The kind of project that would sink like a stone without solid pro's infront and behind the camera. Did Berry - third choice according to the producers and this site - really have to cry at the Oscars? Is this really that great a performance technically? We see black women endorsing products, walking down catwalks and even being the richest people on TV, is this really a breakthrough?
I am sure she has cried, screwed, shouted and got drunk in real life - as we all have - so what is so difficult here? Maybe her "sponsors" prevented her from waiting tables in real life, but I am sure even that wasn't a stretch.
Thorton's performance is just as good as Berry's, although it is rather Kevin Cosner like in being over-the-top polite and attentive after he has fallen in love. Amazing how quickly people can change habits of a lifetime in movies.
(If screenwriters wrote about Hitler surviving the war they would have him seeing the error of his ways and helping build the Israeli state. Probably having been done a good turn by a blind Jew or something!)
I am glad I saw this movie, but I was left with a feeling of so-what? Too many people are dead that I didn't know well enough to feel anything about. The principle characters haven't done anything that warrants my respect other than surviving a whole pile of problems. What happens next - is this a happy ever after story? Couldn't tell you and - quite frankly my dear - I couldn't give a damn...