A good movie

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back and since I have it on DVD, I was quite eager to check it out again. Well, to be honest, I always had some mixed feelings towards this movie. I mean, I did enjoy this flick but I can't say I was blown away and the main reason was that I didn't really appreciate this mix of historical facts with some complete fiction, especially the first time I saw the damned thing. Maybe you didn't know that before but the character played by James McAvoy, Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, is enterily fictional and has actually never existed and many of those events actually never took place. When I found this out afterwards, I felt rather cheated. Still, the directing is pretty good and efficient, James McAvoy gave a decent and convincing performance and, of course, Forest Whitaker completely rocked his performance and deservedly received an Academy award for his tremendous work. Honestly, I would rather have that they focused the story on him instead of focusing on this fake character but it wasn't meant to be, I guess. With this rewatch, I was this time more able to let go the fact that it was actually a fiction but it still didn't completely work for me though. I mean, the first half was fine but, again, they kept adding some rather improbable fictional events just to move on the plot and the second half was pretty much on auto-pilot. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it is still a good historical thriller, the actors were really awesome but, to be honest, I wish they didn't add all this fictitional stuff.

7/10