The director, Susanne Bier, who did the original version of Brothers (remade by Jim Sheridan) has an equally powerful film here. She goes for great acting moments in a film that is about loss and recovery - in this case a murder and an addiction. Bier goes for intense moments of truth, and her patient and intense visual style seeks that out. She knows what to shoot, and how to pace the editing to draw an audience into the heads of these characters.
The performances she gets from her actors are more than enough reason to see the film. Halle Berry is at her best, and Benicio Del Toro shows how really amazing he can be. Watch for his playful moments, his seeming ease, and how he contrasts that with some really intense acting as a drug addict. What a face on the guy! Even the kids are spot on with none of that 'professional' air, but really natural performances. I love Omar Benson Miller's (Miracle at St Anna's) scenes. He is a warm and wonderful actor. John Carroll Lynch as the kindly and conflicted neighbor disappears into another role as he has in 79 other movies. And finally, Duchovny has real chemistry with Halle Berry as her husband in a marriage that is warm, loving, if not always perfect - which only adds to the pain of loss. It is refreshing to see multi-racial casting like this, not to make a point, but because the actors are right and they live in the real world.
Some reviews have called the film melodramatic, and the acting "award seeking". But that is unfair to a director who knows how to pull from a decent script, and great actors, moments of real insight, emotion, and truth. That's what I was hoping to see, and that's definitively what I got.
The performances she gets from her actors are more than enough reason to see the film. Halle Berry is at her best, and Benicio Del Toro shows how really amazing he can be. Watch for his playful moments, his seeming ease, and how he contrasts that with some really intense acting as a drug addict. What a face on the guy! Even the kids are spot on with none of that 'professional' air, but really natural performances. I love Omar Benson Miller's (Miracle at St Anna's) scenes. He is a warm and wonderful actor. John Carroll Lynch as the kindly and conflicted neighbor disappears into another role as he has in 79 other movies. And finally, Duchovny has real chemistry with Halle Berry as her husband in a marriage that is warm, loving, if not always perfect - which only adds to the pain of loss. It is refreshing to see multi-racial casting like this, not to make a point, but because the actors are right and they live in the real world.
Some reviews have called the film melodramatic, and the acting "award seeking". But that is unfair to a director who knows how to pull from a decent script, and great actors, moments of real insight, emotion, and truth. That's what I was hoping to see, and that's definitively what I got.