An interesting failure

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back, I thought I might as well check it out again. When this movie was released, it wasn’t really a box-office success and it received some rather poor reviews. However, even though many people thought that it was rather lousy, some others believed it was actually one of the best movies ever made and they really loved it creating some kind of cult following. This might explain why the ratings are higher than what I would have expected. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the whole thing and some stuff just didn’t really work. Above all, the end was actually pretty bad. It's a shame because the concept definitely had some potential and the first ten minutes were awesome (like most of the viewers, I was really caught up by surprise when Brad Pitt was hit by those cars right from the start. It is not very often that you come across a movie where the lead star is killed off so fast and so brutally). Indeed, from this point, it was pretty obvious that I was watching something else. Eventually, as long as the movie focused on telling the story of this old man facing the last moments of his life with Death itself, it worked fine, especially since Anthony Hopkins gave here, in my opinion, one of his best performances. Unfortunately, there was also another plot line involving Death falling in love and while it was definitely less interesting, the biggest problem was that Brad Pitt was simply just not up to the task. Sure, Pitt was back then already one of the biggest movie stars in the world but the guy was still pretty much only a pretty face and he didn’t have at the time the acting skills to play such a complex character. Then, you had also a 3rd plot line (explaining why this movie was running 3 hrs) involving the main character’s business but it was terribly generic and predictable. Coming back to the ending, seriously, it must be one of the most non-sensical conclusion I have ever seen and it seemed to be a major step-back after making so many bold decisions before. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is an intriguing movie with some potential and it is definitely worth a look.


6/10