Reviews

I rate this movie in my top 5 movies of all time. It's one of the few movies to make me cry and I'm not even gay!

It's so refreshing to see a film which celebrates the unconditional love of parents for their children. It's a rarely treated subject in film. Juno is another film which treats this topic beautifully. So many films deal with the intolerance of parents towards wayward children when I'd argue that more often than not parents will stick by their kids whatever. Why do so many films try to tell us otherwise?

As someone who is approaching the age where mothers are really pressuring us to settle down and produce some grandchildren I can really relate to the lead character as well.

As I said in the title to this post the twist in the tale of this story is so subtle and unexpected and at the same time so powerful. It left me with a renewed faith in humanity.

Like the Big Country, which I think contains some really profound and important lessons about what it is to be a man, I feel that this film contains some equally important messages about being a parent.

I really think that the writer made a mess of this story. Just as background I ought to explain that this story is based in part on fact. In 1975 Alistair Little murdered Jimmy Griffin in front of Jimmy's little brother Joe. The writers takes this as his starting point and then hypothesises a current day meeting between the two characters, Alistair and Joe played by Nesson and Nesbitt.

The opening segment of the film set in the 70's are brilliant. For someone like me who grew up in the UK in the 80's it really brought home to me the horror of what went on in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Young men incited to murdered each other with absolutely cold brutality just because they were a different religion.

Then the film skips forward to the present day and the problems start.

Firstly, both these men must have gone through years of torture over what they experienced. We as viewers see almost none of that torture other than what we see in the faces and hear from the mouths of the characters in the present day. This is a movie, not a play, the writer should be showing us their pain.

Also, we see almost no context around their current lives. Nothing around how they spend their days, where they work, who they hang out with, what they do for fun. All these little details are so important in a film like this. They're important for understanding and empathising with the characters.

My biggest criticism is that this very serious story is ultimately reduced to a run-of-the-mill movie fist fight. It's tacky. It demeans the subject matter which it's treating. If Joe Griffin really told the writer that this would have been his reaction then they should have cast someone different to Nesbitt.

Having said all this I'd recommend everyone to see it. It's quite affecting despite its flaws.

I went to see this last night and I was really, really disappointed. Luckily I fell asleep before the end thus putting myself out of my misery.

The stunts and effects in this film are amazing but that wasn't what I went to see. I wanted the Indy who fought a bloody gun-fight in Nepal and speared someone with a flaming kebab in Shanghai. All the grit had been taken out of the character.

You can't do an Indiana Jones film properly without Nazis. It just doesn't work. You need that real air of menace. Temple of Doom got over this by introducing the human sacrifice element. This film had no menace.

The film includes many references to the other Indy films and it just ends up making you nostalgic.

Ford should steer well clear of any more films. All involved should be embarrassed.