SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Godard is fearless. Of that there is no doubt, and if that were enough to warrant him as a master of filmmaking, then countless filmmakers would be labeled masters for making films not for the audience but for themselves. Every director, to an extent, is making the film for themselves. But in the process of making it for themselves, they come into contact with and then disseminate elements that later speak to someone who might be watching the film. With the majority of Godard's films, it feels as though he is laughing at an in-joke or propagating an anti-societal agenda with elements only he is capable of deciphering. The result, at least for me, is almost always a drunken flurry of images, incongruous sounds, and inexplicable character actions that show me method in madness but distance me from feeling the madness in the method. "Every Man for Himself" is a perfect example of this. It jumps around and gets inside (as all Godard films do) a number of different characters, many of whom have nothing to do with anything other than perhaps preach a shocking aphorism here or there. The film starts with a woman, shows her in various countryside locations riding her bike and standing with wind in her hair. These are not actors but models, and NOT in the Bressonian sense. Bresson used his actors as models, true, but he still somehow was masterful at imbuing them with a sense of purpose (even if the purpose is dealing with purposelessness) and a sense of orientation. Godard fails at this, and perhaps because he WANTS to fail. It's clear watching any of his films that he is a man who cringes at the slightest hint that his art might be compared to another's or that an audience member dares "understand" his film. I understand this impulse, but not Godard's execution of it, with the exception of his work on everything before and including Pierrot le fou. In those films, Godard reached us with his passion for cinema (particularly American films) and his daring vision of contemporary life at odds with itself. It just seems, at a certain point, that Godard's filmmaking offers us little pieces of insight, little moments of cinematic ingenuity that do nothing to enhance the raw impact of his films but instead commend him as what he primarily is: a theorist and critic with more thought than execution going on in the majority of his post-60s films.

An examination of sexual relationships, in which three protagonists interact in different combinations.In addition to Godard's typical refusal to keep viewers oriented through expository dialogue and continuity editing, the film is experimental in its use of the technique that Godard called "decomposition," which he first employed for the 1979 French television mini-series "France/tour/detour/deux/enfants". In the technique, there is a periodic slowing down of the action to a frame by frame advancement. The "slow motion" segments are somewhat obnoxious and really detract from the enjoyment of the film.Film critic Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times, described the film effusively as "stunning," "beautiful," and "brilliant". I don't feel as strongly.An interesting side note: the appearance of the nationality sticker on the back of a car. In the United States, these did not really become popular until the 1990s or later, and yet they seem to be found somewhat commonly in 1980s Europe.

The foremost image in this film, which I find difficult to erase from my memory, is that of the 2 prostitutes, 1 john and 1 lackey set up. How original. It made me think of "Vivre sa vie" and then "2 or 3 things I know about her". Granted these are the only Godard films I've seen, but the sex trade theme is definitely prevalent.In the earlier films, of course, it's toned down but one of the things they all have in common is the coldness of the transaction and the purely business way that they are carried out. It almost seems as though they have not been directed by a man, but a woman.All in all, I find Jean Luc, one of the more honest and clear thinking directors of not only our generation, but any generation. Can't wait to see more.

Somewhere about thirty minutes into the movie it struck me how much Godard loves something about movie-making. That's a rare feeling -- to watch a movie and feel the director's love, passion, or fascination for/with the medium. There's a character named Godard in the movie. He's a director. At one point, he says, "The only reason I make movies is because I haven't the strength to do nothing at all." One thinks that the Real Godard would have us believe the words were coming from him. BUT seeing his frames, his cuts, the way he sets the light -- the inventiveness of all of it -- you just feel his joy in the enterprise.