hyped garbage

Great Film overall

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This film seems like a good thriller book. The film is not all that bad but many decisions seems unlikely in the film. The guy comes out as quite the sucker for a lawyer. Some bits appear rather fake and rushed toward the end.

How a director of Altman's experience could ever expect us to want to spend time with, or to care about what happens to, a lead character who is neurotic, a whiner, a jerk with no redeeming qualities -- that is the central puzzle about this profoundly confused piece of work. A monstrous piece of trash. In addition to this crippling flaw, the plot line requires serious concentration to follow. The setup that the Branagh character walks into is so obviously a setup from the start that we are inclined to wonder whether the writer and director have totally lost respect for their audience. This latter issue is at the core of the film: it represents directorial self-indulgence with profound contempt for the taste, values, and intelligence of the viewer. Very unusual for Mr. Altman.Patrick Watson

A lawyer is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse when he becomes involved with a femme fatale in this adaptation of a Grisham novel. Altman creates a suspenseful, Gothic atmosphere but the script is weak. Sporting a Southern drawl, Branagh is convincing as the lawyer, and Davidtz is alluring as the object of his desire. Downey is likable as a private detective. Duvall has a small role, which does not allow him to do much with his weird character. Hannah and Berenger round out the impressive cast. After an interesting setup, the film bogs down and does not really deliver on its initial promise, but Altman is always worth a look.

Kenneth Branagh plays a rascal, a hypocritical scoundrel,a villain,a bad lot &low fellow.Embeth Davidtz's character is a bit of fluff.Often moderately and conventionally atmospheric, the film has also a moralist intention and aim,a moralist, moralizing, ironic, quizzer, chaffer, biting, sarcastic side, with accents of satire--all of these, alternatively, also with fluid transitions.Yet the characters are mere puppets, which is bad in a moralist work--i.e.,a work that sets itself up for a moral study, for a study of manners.This ample defect undermines the entire film, it is a major flaw.The movie is, therefore, never complete or entire--and still for another reason or lack as well--it lacks the dramatic dimension, the labyrinthine itinerary, and it sadly reminds things like Mike Figgis' Cold Creek Manor (2003) or as cheap as Phil Joanou's Final Analysis (1992).A straight thriller like Peter Hyams' Narrow Margin (1990)(--with Gene Hackman,the delicious humid Anne Archer,M. Emmet Walsh,etc.) was ten times better and much more chilling.The story is trite, and the handling is hackneyed and tarnished. Which results in the movie being cheap, phony, schmaltz, a trite surrogate.(Hammer time:once B. Barbera spoke about the fake things, the fake legends in music--like U2 and Doors; the same might be said, for the cinema ,about directors like Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah.Or, to complete here, and quote myself a bit from an earlier review—also phony prestige directors like Lynch, Burton, the Coens, Soderbergh, maybe Shyamalan, Scorsese, the very phony idols of a fastidious emptiness.But maybe I will recant these stances someday.)Now to positive elements (that The Gingerbread Man (1998) completely lacks):a mystery thriller ought to be a maze, labyrinthine, sinuous, circuitous, like The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Touch of Evil (1958) ; like Don Siegel's adaptation of Israel Zangwill's novel "The Big Bow Mystery"--fortunately never adapted again since '46!;and like "Vertigo";like Jean Delannoy's Maigret movies,like Dario Argento's '70s movies,like David Wickes' Jack the Ripper (1988),or like François Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid .