Two Brothers (2004)

ALERT VIEWER

Two Brothers: Drama. Starring Kumal, Sangha and Guy Pearce. Directed by
Jean-Jacques Annaud. (PG. 115 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)



Jean-Jacques Annaud directed the 1989 masterpiece, “The Bear,” a
narrative film for which he got brilliant dramatic performances out of a
couple of grizzlies, an astonishing feat. So any time Annaud wants to point
his camera at animals, it’s worth looking his way. His new film, “Two Brothers,
” the story of a pair of baby tigers, benefits from the cuteness and
magnificence of its animal stars and from Annaud’s patience, his willingness
to wait for the right shot, the right expression.

It’s in many ways a beautiful film, but it’s also a troubled one. The
trouble comes from Annaud’s inability to fulfill a couple of opposing demands:
1) He is simply too much of an artist and an animal lover not to tell the true
story of tigers, a tragic tale by any measure; 2) At the same time he’s
constrained by what audiences, including children, expect from a movie
involving animals. So the result is schizophrenic, an uplifting film that’s
truly depressing, a movie about cruelty that tries to be fluffy.

He gives himself additional trouble by co-writing, with his frequent
collaborator Alain Godard, a bifurcated script that follows two story lines
most of the way. The most fascinating footage in “Two Brothers” involves the
animals interacting with each other. But most of the film has to do with each
tiger interacting separately with disparate sets of human beings, and worse,
with human beings talking with each other. Annaud seems no more interested in
these people than we are.

“Two Brothers” is set in Indochina in the early part of the 20th century
– if you want to make a movie at a time when there were still lots of tigers,
you have to go back that far. A seduction scene starts it off. A female tiger
rolls on her back, inspiring a male to chase her, though when he catches up to
her, she tries to scratch his face. You know, just another Saturday night in
the wild. From there, cut to a shot of the scenery, and next thing we know Mom
and Pop have two irrepressible and adorable cubs.

Almost all fee-based streaming video movie webservices , resources warn that cost-free watching video sites can only provide you bad quality movies with disappointing resolutions that hinder your online movie streaming experience, it is totally] true. enought of bandwidth for good viewing, or streaming links to the streaming movies you want to watch? These very important considerations that will have the greatest influence on the quality of your relaxation is what you will choose : download movie sites or watching site. Download movie sites offers a great resolution , so you can get pleasute of your favorite films in hd quality anytime. Movies free

At this point, “Two Brothers” is at its best, and it seems like a gift to
be watching yet another Annaud film like “The Bear.” We see the gamboling cubs
playing with their mother’s tail, getting into scrapes with other animals and
wrestling each other. We get close-ups of their concerned little-old-man-like
faces. When a party of humans shows up, led by a hunter named McRory (Guy
Pearce), the film maintains the animal perspective. In one scene, McRory plays
a gramophone record that echoes into the woods, and, with no extra effects,
Annaud persuades us to hear the music as the animals hear it — as static
and noise, as alarming and anti-nature.

But soon the cubs are separated, one sent to a circus and another to the
dungeon of a local potentate. The focus switches to the human characters, who,
aside from McRory, are drawn in broad strokes. As the picture notes in a
postscript, there were 100,000 tigers in the wild a century ago, but today
there are only 5,000. True to that reality, “Two Brothers” depicts a catalog
of abuses. Annaud’s heart may be in the right place, but who wants to watch
animals being terrorized for two hours?

He makes matters worse when he tries to offset this with sentimentality,
making the tigers positively Lassie-like in their ability to understand human
language, and cuddly in a way that has nothing to do with real tigers. But the
value of these creatures has nothing to with our ability to anthropomorphize
them. Their value is intrinsic. Annaud knows this, but two-thirds into the
movie he’s flailing, looking for a way to be honest and yet not send everyone
out miserable. He can’t quite find it.

– Advisory: Animal foreplay and inter-species violence.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

Three Seasons (1999)

Viewed from a purely vivid angle, Tony Bui's ahead feature, a euphoric, melancholy think the world of line to (and elegy for) his resident Vietnam, is rhyme of the most dreamy and exquisitely delightful films you'll see over the next 12 months.

Blood and Bone movie download best quality

Set in coetaneous Saigon, the narrative weaves together a quintet of lives: Kien An (Nguyen Ngoc Hiep), a young girl working as a lotus picker on a dynastic estate; Hai (Don Duong), a cyclo driver who falls concerning the lovely, aloof cotquean Lan (Zo' Bui); Woody (Nguyen Huu Duoc), a street urchin desperately taxing to recover a lost suitcase of trinkets; and Hager (Keitel, unusually out of sorts in an underdeveloped role), a grizzled ex-marine searching for the daughter he fathered during the conflict, and hoping to make his congenial with the country.

Bui's film, with its underlying themes of forgiveness, redemption and regeneration, is offering a similar olive branch, but in providing a counterpoint to the celluloid mythology of Vietnam as polity of barbarians playing Russian roulette with chaste GIs, the director has swung the pendulum too decidedly in the other direction. Consequently the air is let down by overly symbolic exposition, infuriating mawkishness and glibly romanticised characters (Woody is sentimentalised to within an inch of Disney, and how many Saigon whores, you ask yourself, become to ride down vistas showered in blossoms?), suggesting that Bui's wistfully idealised vision is sorely in need of a genuineness check.
This may sound have a weakness for taciturn judgement to heap on such a burgeoning talent, or a composition that boasts so myriad lovingly composed images, but if you yearning to see a Vietnam that isn't tainted by xenophobia or coloured by Bui's rose-tinted camera lens, the mettlesome lyricism of Tran Anh Hung's underrated

Cyclo

is still the best starting point.



Get this review and thousands more on on your iPhone, download the



Empire Movie Guide



now!

Michael Caine stars in this B…

Michael Caine stars in this British misdeed photoplay as Billy ‘Shiner’ Simpson, a latest boxer who, after ruining his chances at tasteful a champ is now a niggardly time boxing promoter representing his son Eddie (Marsden). Eddie has accomplished everything Billy couldn’t, and is set to battle an American champ for the title. However, when things do not go as expected and Eddie winds up being killed, Billy forthwith suspects botch play from the American’s manager and his arch adversary Frank Spedding. However, as his rage and paranoia grows, Billy comes to mistrust his closest friends as well as his daughters, sending him on a murderous rage to exact give someone his owing his son’s obliteration and his ruined preoccupation.

Almost all non-paid watching video movie webservices , resources warn that free streaming movie services can only offer you low quality films with disappointing resolutions that destroy your online movie streaming experience, it is totally] true. Site host, i.e. does the site have comfortable viewing, or streaming links to the streaming movies you want to see? These important considerations that will have the greatest effect on the quality of your relaxation is what you will choose: download movie sites or watching site. Download movie sites give a great quality , so you can watch your favorite movies in hd quality anytime. Download An Education full length excellent quality divx

: One of Disney’s successes in…

:



Unified of Disney’s successes in the 80’s calm before the 90’s storm (”Lion King”, “Little Mermaid”, etc), “Great Mouse Detective” works with not only fine material, but also boasts animators capable of creating wonderful tone and atmosphere. Taking place in a foggy, beautifully rendered London, the membrane opens with little mouse Olivia’s father being kidnapped by the disgraceful Ratigan (voiced by Vincent Price). Lost and crying in the street, she’s befriended by a Watson-esque mark who takes her to Basil, apparently entire of the grand mouse detectives and clearly a take on Sherlock Holmes. After a little convincing, Basil finally decides to take the case.

The Prodigy full movie download dvd



“Great Mouse Detective” is not epic enough in expanse or bright or detailed enough to be considered among a man of Disney’s classics, but it’s a smaller effort that I think a part of people stillness remember fondly. Like to “Oliver and Company”, which came right after it, it doesn’t have overpowering enlivening, but it does have intensive voice pan out e formulate, star, a scattering solid action scenes and a agreeably-written screenplay.




Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

JOHNNY COGIO SU FUSIL (1971)






Director: Dalton Trumbo

Intérpretes: Timothy Bottoms, Jason Robards, Kathy Fields, Diane Varsi.

Primera Guerra Mundial. Un soldado de nombre Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms) ha quedado ciego, mudo y mutilado trar un bombardeo del enemigo.

Mientras es tratado por doctores y enfermeras sufrirá por la imposibilidad de comunicación con los mismos.

Download Book of Blood Full Movie blu ray

Esta es la única película dirigida por el guionista Dalton Trumbo, una de las víctimas más conocidas y prominentes de la penosa caza de brujas llevada a cabo por el senador McCarthy.

Adaptando su propia novela, la plasmació de film puede resultar un tanto pretenciosa en su curioso afán narrativo (más propio de un bisoño estudiante de cine que de un cineasta maduro) pero el escalofriante docudrama sobre los horrores de la guerra permanece totalmente intacto en sus amargos fotogramas, especialmente cuando contemplamos en una pálida tonalidad pictórica el cuerpo inerte de Timothy Bottoms sin brazos, sin piernas y con el rostro oculto.

Los últimos momentos de la película, desde la original felicitación navideña de la enfermera hasta el emocionante plano final despliegan un conmovedor y poderoso mensaje que trasciende todo tipo de ideologías.

El escenario de pesadilla surrealista que enmarca el relato cinematográfico, con diversidad fotográfica y constantes flashbacks concernientes a lazos familiares, cuitas religiosas y desarrollo existencial, sirve para dotar a la trama de una atmósfera estrambótica e irreal, identificadora con su propia concepción del conflicto armado y sus terribles consecuencias.

“Plays out as a bold meditati…

Some non-paid watching video movie webservices , resources warn that free streaming movie sites can only provide you low quality films with disappointing resolutions that destroy your online movie watching experience, it is Website host, i.e. does the site have plenty of bandwidth for comfortable viewing, or streaming links to the streaming movies you want to watch? These important considerations that will have the greatest impact on the quality of your relaxation is what you will choose: download movie sites or streaming site. Download movie sites offers a great quality , so you can get pleasute of your favorite movies in hd quality anytime. Downloading Avatar excellent quality online

“Plays out as a bold meditative
essay on transcendence and our relationship to nature.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A maddening personal and highly unusual three-hour philosophical
travelogue film by Toronto-based experimental filmmaker Peter Mettler (”Picture
of Light”/”The Top of his Head”/”Eastern Avenue”), cinematographer for
Atom Egoyan among many others, that plays out as a bold meditative essay
on transcendence and our relationship to nature. It hops across four countries
and cultures, and it relates those places to man’s own inner spiritual
trip to find the meaning of life. 

Things start perking at the Toronto International Airport, as among
a number of things covered there the one that stands out is the fervor
of a religious revival meeting where members of some kind of a fundamentalist
Christian religious congregation exhibit mass spasmodic ecstasy visions
of their savior Jesus. It then heads to the deserts of the isolated Monument
Valley, one of Hollywood’s favorite spots to shoot Westerns, and onto the
crowded casino scene in Las Vegas that also comes with other pleasures
to its hedonistic seekers such as strip clubs and electrical sexual pleasure
gadgets for those who want to get off to be stimulated without a mate.
It then leap frogs to Switzerland, where Mettler’s family hails from. Mettler
goes for many street scenes, where he encounters a childhood friend who
in his adult life has been fighting a losing battle with subtance abuse
and loneliness and a junkie couple who extol heroin as helping with their
enlightenment (with all due respect, lots of luck on that one!). The filmmaker
then searches out a pastoral utopian river from his childhood memory. Albert
Hofmann, the Swiss scientist discoverer of LSD, is tracked down in his
lab and offers his opinion that his drug increases one’s awareness (I buy
that if you can find the pure LSD made in his lab and not the street kind
cut with speed). It’s then off to India, where one lady tells us in her
culture there’s no difference between God and a stone. Another tells us
there’s a difference between looking for something and just looking. There’s
also the India of modern technology that coexists with its beliefs in divinity,
of Bollywood, of sacred ancient rituals and of its cravings to find an
inner peace in such an unstable world.

This unstructured and uneven eclectic film takes us wherever the
restless Mettler chooses to place his film crew since he started filming
in 1997, and like a long meditation it has its exhilarating and momentous
moments plus at times it’s easy to fade out and lose track of the way.
It reminds us of all the thrill seekers we viewed, who can’t stay on a
perpetual high but must come down for a dose of reality like all earthlings
must. Mettler wants to reassure us that the world looks strange and different
to the global traveler only because every part of the world has their own
answers to the meaning of life, but in actuality he has found we all have
the same desires, same gestures and same questions. Whatever … this is
a compelling watch, it mixes just about everything it can find into its
receipe and comes up with a tasty and original film for the thinking person
who can handle such a mind fuck of a bumpy ride.

“It avoids the use of clich&e…

“It avoids the use of clichés.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Pierre (Daniel Auteuil), a book illustrator, and Anne (Isabelle Huppert),
a career professional woman, are about to become separated despite an apparently
satisfactory marriage. They are an affluent couple living in a swell Parisian
apartment, both of them nurturing all the love they possibly can muster
for the centerpiece of their lives –  their fifteen month old boy
Loulou (Louis Vincent). The surprise comes when they are watching a film
where Ingrid Bergman states: “We have to change our way of living.” Pierre
tries to hold her hand, which she rebuffs saying she just wants to watch
the movie. Outside the theater she stuns him further by saying she is in
love with another man. And that’s the gist of the story line for this sophisticated
and superbly acted romance story, that turns the tables on the old notion
that the man controls the destiny of the household. Pierre is portrayed
as someone who has done nothing ghastly to ruin the marriage and the couple
still profess a love for each other, yet they are undergoing a separation.

Pierre doesn’t know quite how to respond except by showing how much
his pride has been hurt. Anne’s reaction is to avoid eye contact, trying
to console him gently, realizing how much she has hurt him. His quiet manner,
hurt expression, and look of bewilderment, says it all. While, strangely
enough, they try to carry on with life as usual in their apartment as their
ideal nanny, Laurence (Laurence), minds the baby. After a few weeks of
living like this, a rage starts to build and his jealousy starts to take
over. He confides in his friend Victor (Deschamps) about how difficult
it is for him and Victor is supportive, but there is little one can say
that is eloquent in such situations.

“In a couple, one suffers and the other one’s bored, and vice versa.”
This epigram, revealed near the beginning of 
La Separation
and repeated near its end, explains in some way what has happened to their
marriage. It now becomes a question if they can weather this storm and
the bitterness that is so much a part of their love. A pivotal scene is
when the verbal fighting, accusations and hitting take place between them
that was really unexpected from this urbane couple, except we can see it
building up and festering inside the stricken Pierre. He feels like a wounded
animal who must strike back. When the 40-year-old Victor tells him that
he is going to marry his long time live-in girlfriend Claire (Viard), he
can’t even feel a joy for his friend’s decision as he is totally wrapped
up in his own problems.

The director wisely doesn’t give us too much information about her
lover or the details of their love life. We are left to fend for ourselves
and see how uncommunicative they really are. At one point in the film we
are told about a California woman who had no conversations with her husband
so she miked their house and played back the tapes for divorce court, where
she collected a bundle from her husband. Lack of communication is where
we are going with this melodramatic romance story.

This is an intelligent film told from the point of view of the man,
though this film is not as powerful as Paul Cox’s similar type of film
My First Wife.” Its huge plus, however, is that it avoids
the use of clichés usually reserved for explaining why a couple
is breaking up and plays up the small petty things in a relationship that
strain one’s nerves. This is exemplified in the scene where Anne is forced
to fly a kite, even when she tells her husband no. Her anger at him, brings
home the point of how silly most fights are.

When Pierre appears to be almost reconciled to the fact that he has
lost his wife and now eighteen month old child, he wistfully says: “I will
now have to learn to live without you and Loulou.”

Download Impact Pt II Movie dvd

This marriage-go-round leaves off in familiar territory. Most of
us know how it feels to be unsure of someone we love. It stings. This work
is a testament to a confused couple who come to realize that they have
to face their situation without covering it up.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness review

Full of the lubricous mysteriousness which Hammer used to achieve so effortlessly during their hanker occupation of Bray Studios. Starting with a re-run of the Count’s dusty demise at the hands of Van Helsing, this was the bona fide supplement to Dracula, and - though it tails off - the word go hour has real grandeur as Dracula’s government uses a prudish Victorian couple to effect his master’s restoration.

Almost all non-paid watching video movie sites warn that cost-free streaming movie sites can only offer you low quality films with annoying resolutions that hinder your online movie streaming experience, it is almost often host, i.e. does the site have enought of bandwidth for good viewing, or working links to the streaming movies you want to see? These very important considerations that will have the greatest effect on the quality of your relaxation is what you will choose : download movie sites or watching site. Download movie sites offers a great quality , so you can enjoy your favorite movies in hd quality anytime. Divx download movies

Better Housekeeping review

An bizarre satire of immaculate scoria marital angst that is some kind of ultimate American-opulence marriage of undersized-tube “reality” programming and Dogma aesthetics, the jestingly-in-cheek-titled “Good Housekeeping” is an eminently dignitary prizewinner of Slamdance’s feature Genius Prize. This is a rare no-budget pic that both plays with auds and leaves a convincing morning-after impression, an effectively exaggerated view of soul tragedy that makes you ponder that tragedy after the dust clears. Once filmmaker Uninhibited Novak makes a 35mm blowup of his in the air 16mm type, he should press teeny difficulty luring able-bodied distribs to a potency sleeper which could devise throngs on the substitute and arthouse border.

Book of Blood full movie best quality

Novak grew current pic from the seeds planted in his 1996 short, “Domestic Disturbance,” and that film’s verite approach is continued here. With remarkable effectiveness and raw, assertive energy, pic drops us right down into the maelstrom that is the disintegrated marriage of action-figure collector Don (Bob Mills) and Italian-born Donatella (Petra Westen), who are so alienated from each other that they employ only son Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner) as their conversational go-between.

Both spouses feel compelled to stay in their grungy North Hollywood home prior to their divorce court date two weeks hence, but while Donatella refuses to budge out of fear that she will lose everything in court, Don is intent on pushing her every button to drive her screaming out of the house he wants for himself.

Exposition is skillfully laid out by following characters on the run, lending the situation a grinding yet hilarious feeling of the real. Once it’s revealed that Donatella, who works a forklift at a warehouse, is in love with female company accountant Marion (Tacey Adams), Don loses it, waging full war over who controls the house. His belligerent solution is to build a wall splitting the kitchen in two (including a “doggy door” for little Don Jr. to crawl through), and his growing network of friends in the toy-collectibles subculture drunkenly cheer him on.

With a hurtling sense of momentum, side characters pile into the movie, each with distinctive wacko personalities. Contrasting the placid Donatella-Marion relationship is Don’s wild group, like a ’70s bong party frozen in time. His brother-in-law Chuck (singly named thesp Zia) is an ultimate loser, serving as the house “guard” in exchange for living in Don’s prized Cordoba with his crack-addled g.f., Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan), while taciturn toy collector Barry (Scooter Stephan) is only into making deals for Don’s “legendary” Puppetmaster collection, and fellow collector Mike (Jerry O’Conner) doles out legal advice. Catalyst comes in the form of Joe (Al Schuermann), a men’s rights advocate and gun nut who stokes Don’s emotions and arms him (gratis) with a pistol and, yes, a rocket launcher.

Latter prop is loudest clue that pic is ready to go over the edge if it must, and, even though it does, amazingly, it works. While the Battle of the D’s escalates (accented by repeated visits by exasperated L.A. Sheriff deputies), pic hits some ultra-comic highs.

One involves trashy, obese Roz (Norma Barbour) backing her car out of the driveway and nearly destroying the entire property, while another, featuring Tiffany OD’ing, is one of the best, most surprising blends of drugs and human comedy since “Pulp Fiction.” Even highly debatable conclusion, considering savagery that has come before, is a plus in the sense that it leaves aud discussing serious issues of abusive domestic relationships. Though it’s hard to understand what calm, adult Marion could possibly see in unkempt, high-tempered Donatella, the comedy-satire plays out convincingly because grim, tragic issues support it.

Download Book of Blood Movie blu ray

A triumph of indie casting of unknowns, “Good Housekeeping” is knee-deep in delicious thesping, led by Mills, who lets it all out with “Raging Bull”–like outbursts while delivering one-liners with ultra-natural, deadpan skill. Westen is a mightily worthy opponent, filling out a character who could have been a caricature of white trash machisma with layers of hurt and fear. Zia provides one of those invaluable perfs in second-tier characters which lifts pic to another level, while Adams, Stephan, Schuermann, O’Conner, Kerrigan, Barbour and Doug Duane’s Larry complete a universe of well-rounded types (often in more ways than one) where almost anything that can go wrong will.

Smart employment of vet docu d.p. Alex Vendler produces an inventive use of low-light and wide-angle lenses and ultra-mobile cameras, which gamely cover nonstop action in frequently snug quarters. Whole look is less “Cops” than Dogma-goes-to-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks, while soundtrack is wild mix of heavy metal, country, Elgar and Beethoven. Added production bonus is how Novak, co-owner of Modernica furniture company, cleverly places his outfit’s mid-century pieces throughout interiors.

A Civil Action review

“What the film failed to do,
is to bring a sense of urgency.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

“A Civil Action” is about a real court case in the early 1980s involving
toxic waste dumping in a small town north of Boston, that is based on Jonathan
Harr’s best-selling non-fiction book about the personal-injury lawyer Jan
Schlichtmann (Travolta). His small law firm brought a willful negligence
lawsuit against two giant corporations: consumer goods conglomerate Beatrice
and chemical giant W.R. Grace. It’s an absorbing story but it was presented
in such a mangled way, so a lot of the drama was sucked out of it and it
instead became an obvious sob story about an injustice done.

Jan is first shown as a hotshot lawyer full of hubris after winning
an ambulance chaser case. He drives his Porsche to Woburn, Massachusetts,
to check out a potential law suit representing some families whose children
died because of leukemia and might have become seriously ill because of
the toxins trichloroethylene (TCE) in their drinking water. He turns the
case down when his clients who are only after an apology and can’t tell
him who to sue that has the big bucks to pay. But that all changes when
he gets a speeding ticket on his way back to Boston and observes from a
bridge the site where the dumping from a tannery owned by Beatricefoods
takes place, and where W.R. Grace has a chemical plant.

This Steven Zaillian directed film has traces of the same intelligence
he has shown in his previous work as director of “
Searching For
Bobby Fischer”
and as a screenwriter for “Schindler’s List,”
but loses its fire-power with scenes of endless courtroom hagglings and
what seems like an interminable amount of time spent in giving prep classes
on how the court system works.

The big corporations throw their big law firms against his small
one, with Grace represented by the arrogant Cheeseman (Norris) and Beatrice
by the wily and eccentric Jerome Facher (Duvall). Duvall hams it up with
his oddball tics and distracting mannerisms — during a phone conversation
with a fellow lawyer, he willfully bounces a ball against the wall. This
sets up a battle of David versus Goliath. The film stays on track with
the claim that in today’s court system, the odds are rigged against the
little guy and that it takes big money to file a law suit against such
giants. This is proven when Travolta’s law firm is sucked into the case
deeper than what they expected, paying huge expenses to do research to
prove contamination, as they all go broke and have to mortgage their homes
to keep the case going.

The supporting players all have limited roles compared to the two
gunslingers, Travolta and Duvall, but perform admirably. William H. Macy
is on the Travolta team and makes it plain he’s along only for the money,
with him handling the financial matters. But, Macy cracks from the strain
of going belly-up. The others in the firm, Tony Shalhoub and Zeljko Ivanek,
follow their leader Travolta until they see he actually believes in his
clients and they thereby desert him. Dan Hedaya is the tannery owner who
lies on the stand and can’t be shaken from his lie until the case is appealed
by the EPA. John Lithgow is the judge who sides with his big business friends.
James Gandolfini is the only witness who works at the site of W.R. Grace
willing to take a chance and tell what he knows. Sydney Pollack is the
arrogant head of W.R. Grace who won’t talk business with Travolta when
he invites him to the Harvard club, but will only talk shop when he’s back
at his office and he can put his feet up on the table. Anne Anderson is
the gentle Woburn local who is alarmed that her son died of leukemia and
initiated the lawsuit to protect others in the community, as her persistence
finally won out.

For all its telling faults in its storytelling ability, the film
had an aura of reality about it that the John Grisham movies never have.
The entertainment value for the film comes from the simulated gun duel
between the inexperienced Travolta taking on the skilled veteran Duvall,
who always seems to be one move ahead of him. That Travolta undergoes a
change of character during the law suit and really believes what he’s doing
is right is shown in his subtle changes of expression, no longer pretending
to feel the pain of his clients but tunes into his pain. His ego gets a
thorough examination and the superficial things he was once interested
in fail to move him anymore. While Duvall is shown as the masterful Machiavellian
tactician with absolutely no heart, whose M.O. is to shred his opponents
as well as those who are under him. When one of his staff interrupts his
quiet office lunch of listening to the Red Sox game to do him a favor and
give him an important document on the upcoming lawsuit, he spitefully rails
into him for not going out to lunch.

What the film failed to do, is to bring a sense of urgency. Though
the story line was sympathetic to the families’ plight and caught the essence
of what Travolta was up against, which makes it better than most Hollywood
films, it just couldn’t drive the fastball thrown down the middle of the
plate over the ‘Green Monster’ in Fenway Park for a home run. The story
became less than compelling and more of an exercise about who was the better
actor/lawyer Duvall or Travolta. The great social impact of the lawsuit
never caught on during the film when that should have been the driving
force, as it was when grippingly told in the book.