Waste of time

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I saw this movie a few months ago and it made quite an impact on me. This isn't your usual teenage fodder, believe me. It has it's flaws, but it's a pretty good movie with a heavy subject going for it. This movie reminded me of how malicious and cruel people can be. Odin is the focal point of this movie and Meki Phifer did an excellent job, providing the right amount of cockiness and likability. Josh Hartnett takes his acting to the next level with his manipulative and sinister performance. Martin Sheen is dependable as ever in his role. This movie disturbed me a little bit, especially the ending. It stuck with me for a while afterwords7.5/10

Unfortunately, the authors of Othello were not aware of the vast differences between races, black and white. To say that a high school student would be aware of these differences is absolutely ridiculous, regardless of whether or not the kids are jealous. Blacks score, on average about 84 on IQ tests, whites 100, but are better athletes and football players. Blacks have different social norms, backgrounds, families, DNA, crime rates, you name it. The kids would become aware of this, later on. How many can say that the way they were in high school, i.e. friends, dates, was the same as when they were 21 or 31, is not true. To say that the reason Negroes do not mate with whites is "jealousy" is absurd. There is good reason for segregation.

The only reason I don't give this a zero out of 10 is the fact that Julia Stiles is excellent in her role, as is Josh Hartnett. But as to being a brilliant reworking of Othello that adapts to show the dangers of teen-age violence, envy, jealousy and lust? I think not. Virtually everyone in this melodramatic update is an overdone caricature of who they play in the movie. While the bullying scenes and picking on the dweeb are accurate enough, they are followed by a succession of stupid decisions by everyone involved in the plot. Even Julia Stiles' attraction to "O" and his monstrous ego is annoyingly dumb, but then hey... that's the story. The interracial aspect adds nothing to the story either. As a lesson depicting the evils of teen violence, it doesn't work. There's far too much cunning for a teen ager by Hartnett's character, and far, far too much gullible idiocy by "O". The only thing I took away from this movie is bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, and the thought that I am SO glad Martin Sheen was as good as he was on West Wing and won't be remembered for this disaster.

After starring in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Julia Stiles does another movie adapting Shakespeare into a modern high school setting. This one is called O, and is based on Othello. Stiles plays a white girl named Desi who is in a relationship with Odin, a black student who wins basketball games for the school again and again. Another player, Hugo, becomes jealous and plots to tear Odin and Desi apart.A possible problem in making a movie like O is that it might be interpreted as a racist warning for white women- "Ladies, if you're going to date a black guy, be prepared to accept some rape and strangling." (Odin does both to Desi; although she later denies being raped, she technically was because she told Odin to stop and he didn't). But the movie almost certainly isn't trying to promote that kind of message. Perhaps a better view is that race is a secondary issue in O and the real issues are teen jealousy, angst and violence. And that's good subject matter- after the 1999 Columbine high school shootings, teen violence becomes a more relevant issue- there should be more stories trying to tackle it. I found the concept of high school tragedy interesting, and this movie had some solid moments.Still, there are flaws. First off I'll note some of the songs used in this movie just don't fit a tragedy- it's just music that Odin might like. The song Painted On My Heart was used in this movie's brilliant trailer; it should have been used in the movie, too. Turning now to the plot, it's arguable that Odin is too easily manipulated, too quick to deteriorate. We probably don't have enough time to sympathize with him before he goes crazy- like in the rape scene. Beyond that, there are some examples of second-rate acting, like from the girl angry about getting the scarf. Sill, O is entertaining, worth seeing at least.