Tockinit not horrible nor great

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

bowmanblue I've watched 'Franklyn' twice now. The first time I really liked it. The second time, I'm not so impressed. I think it was down to me knowing what was happening even earlier than I had originally.It's an odd piece about two stories running parallel to each other. Nothing that original you might say, but one story is set in a clearly futuristic, dystopian world while the other is simply present day London. You may wonder how exactly these two worlds are connected. Then you kind of figure it out yourself (probably about midway) and the film then continues as if you're still in the dark.Some bits of it are very good - Ryan Phillipe is about the best actor by far who does his best to life what - sometimes - is a bit of a flat script. If you like weird and dark futuristic worlds, you'll like his story best. However, his parts are almost like an action film, whereas the London bits are more like your basic melodrama, leaving the viewer feeling a little off balance.There is definitely an interesting story here (and made more interesting the way it's told). However, I understand that it was originally a SHORT story. That explains a lot. It does feel like it's been dragged out a bit. I can see Franklyn definitely finding an audience. You have to be into lesser-known movies that deliberately try something different. However, I can also see as many people finding it boring, incomprehensible and worthless. Research it carefully before you invest your hour and a half in this film.

virindra My wife knows I like superhero movies and movies like the matrix and Donnie Darko. Put all those facts together, and seeing the cover of Franklyn in the store, and she had all the reasons to buy this movie.At first I thought, maybe this could be something. But on the other hand, if it would have been something, why is this movie not so known? The movie begins with David's fantasy, where he's the Preest. Now here's something bothering me. Ryan Phillippe's performance of Jonathan Preest was very similar to Jackie Earle Haley's performance of Rorschach. I can't say that Ryan P. is the copycat, because Franklyn is from 2008 and Watchmen is from 2009.So I follow the story further, with Eva Green and her disturbing relationship with her mother and her suicide attempts to make a projects. This was all new for me, but I stayed open minded. But even then I did not like this performance of Eva Green and I could not know why.So we walk to the third character Milo with his imaginary girlfriend from the past. Now this character is more simple and easier to follow, or is that deceiving? Did Eva Green just fail to put up the right performance for the job? And at the end all fits in; There was a great story to tell, the translation to film was just boring. Acting was boring. It could have had more drama. With a story with so many depths you have to have actors and actresses who can act with depths. With deeper emotions. And that was not there in this movie.Sometimes when you write a book, or make a movie, you must think if you are ready for it. And of course it's worth to risk the jump, but in this case it would have been better if the story would have waited a few more years to come to the movies. Nolan waited many years to bring out Inception, and he did a very, very good job.Now I have to disagree BBC5 live; this movie was not fantastic and wasn't even close to The Matrix and Donnie Darko. It could have been though.

jeffpk I am frankly surprised almost to the point of shock that so many people have such a hard time following this movie. It is very straight forward in its story telling. The only reason i can imagine anyone *not* following it is either (a) confusion by the mislabeling of this film as a science fiction film (its not, its a psycho-drama) OR (b) geekish yearnings to make the sci fi setting 'real'. The ironic thing about (b) is that those people who do twist the world in such a way are, in fact, illustrating what this movie is all about-- which is the human ability to divorce ones perceptions from reality. The main characters exist in a spectrum of dissociation. (1) David/Jonathan Priest is a recently returned war veteran who is dealing with the trauma of the senseless death of his baby sister. Of all the characters, he is the most disassociated from reality-- to the point where he has created an entirely divergent internally-consistent reality for himself. We would call such a person "dissociative" or "psychotic" normally, but this movie shows him not as unique but merely as an extreme in a continuum of human behavior. (2) Milo created a fantasy friend. "Sally", as a child to cope with the death of his father. To him, Sally is part of his reality, a part that again is only part of his own perceptions. When his life hits a crisis of loneliness in the loss of his fiancée, he brings Sally back into his world. Again, we would view this as a lesser form of disassociation/psychotic break by our normal yardsticks. But there are even more shades here. (3) Emelia has also created a break with reality because of trauma, in this case her childhood abuse (sexual is suggested but never totally stated) by her father. Choosing to forget that and remember it as stories, not reality, she has substituted a desperate longing for a father that she thinks she lost, though chances are he never really existed as she remembers him. Rather then blame herself for the sexual abuse (as victims commonly do) she has substituted a blame of her mother for "taking her father away." She acts out her inner turmoil and attacks her mother through staged "art" suicides. It could be argued that these are also her attempts on some level to punish herself, but thats never developed in the movie. Nonetheless it generally takes either severe depression or severe guilt to bring one to the brink of suicide. (4) David's father has the same trauma that David has-- the traffic accident death of his daughter, David's little sister, In his case, he is clinging to a hard line religious explanation. That it was God's will and God's actions. This gives a senseless and horrible death, a little girl struck down by a car, meaning and allows him to deal with it. It can be argued however that this TOO is a disassociation from the reality that random horrible things happen without purpose or reason. That is a reality that many people we would consider "normal" to flee from and make up stories to hide behind instead. And in the end thats what this movie is about, as explained in the "story" that "Sally" tells Milo about the story teller who built a perfect world, but in the end walked away from it because it wasn't real. And the real and only question this movie leaves is that: what stories do WE live in rather then dealing with reality, and which is really better? Is believing in a cold, uncaring, random world more healthy just because it is "real"? or do we as human beings by our very nature live in worlds of fantasy in order to function? As for the final shot of the bucket and mob without the janitor by it, that is open for debate, but I see it as a "tease".. daring US to interpret the janitor's part in the film not as just one more random element in a random world, but as something with deeper and perhaps mystical meaning. The author leaves that for us, the viewers, to weave fantasies about.

poe426 Maybe it's because I've seen one too many such movies as of late; or maybe it's because the idea has been done to death (beginning with THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, way back in 1919); whatever the reason, I found this latest variation on this particular theme something less than compelling. Did we really need another it's-all-in-his-head cop-out- after DEFENDOR and SPECIAL, etc.? I think not. (One of the best examples of this type of story was done on an episode of HILL STREET BLUES, and featured Dennis Dugan as a would-be do-gooder with perhaps just a few screws loose.) If FRANKLYN does any one thing, it makes clear the value of good production values. Unfortunately, the "alternate reality" segments of the movie- the only parts worth seeing- are minimal. Still, the mask he wears in his "alternate reality" is cool (it looks like a cross between the Shotaro Ishinomori and Kazuhiko Shimamoto manga THE SKULL MAN and Jack Skellington from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE Christmas and the action echoes V FOR VENDETTA). The filmmaker(s) had an opportunity to say something here (the whole religious angle could've been fully explored, for instance), but opted instead to give us more of the same. Think outside the (idiot) box, people...