Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

lathe-of-heaven Okay... The direction, cinematography, the mood, and the pacing were done brilliantly and were truly captivating. And, unlike other reviewers here, I REALLY like Edward Burns; I think he is a cool kat in the vein of a milder Ben Affleck (PLEASE, do yourself a HUGE favour and watch 'CONFIDENCE'; DAMN good film!!!) BUT... And it is a BIG BUT like Mariah Carey's... It just isn't that terribly imaginative or deep. So, if you like your films very simple and straight-forward, you might like it. HOWEVER... If, like me, you like to have a little more mystery, imagination, and flavour in your movies, the ending of this film will leave you flatter than Chaz Bono...The movie is very well made, but, anyone who enjoys a bit more mystery and other-worldly flavour in their films should steer away and watch something else, because it is highly likely the ending will greatly disappoint you.Thus the extreme disparity and polarized reviews of this film...

ibshafer I found the book this movie is based on frustrating and annoying and the characters' actions incomprehensible. The switching POVs are distracting and ineptly done. (Dear Alice Hoffman: You are not John Irving. Third Person Ominiscient is hard to do and rarely effective.) I watched the movie hoping for more fully fleshed out motivations, but instead found the director had fairly closely replicated the novel. We lose... Fine actors give wooden and ponderous performances (Jennifer Ehle is one of my favorite actress and you wasted her...) and the story is as muddy as the creek which figures so prominently in the story. And the characters' actions are *still* incomprehensible, as though the director had been so busy in the editing room making moody little visual sequences, he'd had no time left to actually direct the performers.I employed the same coping method for the movie that I used for the book; halfway through I started to skim and with the movie, when I couldn't take all the painful staring and plodding performances, I fit the FF button...It gets two stars because I loved Jennifer Ehle in "Pride and Prejudice" and because the kid's long black coat is cool...

robert-temple-1 This film is a highly superior offering from a British director of a film made in Canada, apparently Nova Scotia, during a relentless winter with heavy snow. The evocation of a haunting atmosphere from those dramatic settings is brilliantly done, and helps make this moody piece even more brooding, melancholy, and tantalising. The director is Nick Willing, best known for his magical 'Photographing Fairies' (1997), and rarely allowed to make the transition from television to features, for reasons unknown, as he has so much talent. A very strong performance by Ed Burns gives this film just the bone structure it needs, as he is perfectly cast as a bewildered but determined small time cop faced with a mysterious death of a boy which evokes his own demons of his older brother's suicide. The script by David Kane is strangely minimalist, with dialogue often consisting of rows of three dots. I don't know how this could have been filmed without the director telling the actors what to signify during all the silences, which they do excellently, so that the film almost becomes a silent movie at times. This is facilitated by the superior abilities of Jennifer Ehle, who for years has been one of the leading lights of top quality British TV drama, and who conveys enough mystery and ambivalence with her every expression to be perfect for suggestive thrillers like this. The kids at boarding school give strong performances, and are all Canadians. Rachelle Lefevre is multi-layered as the girl Carlin, and must be as ambivalent and mysterious as Ehle for different reasons. Thomas Gibson is compelling as the ill-fated boy around whom the story revolves, and Jamie Thomas King manages to be Mister Nasty Boarding School Bully with appropriate sneers and arrogance, which chill the spine, and one really can believe him to be capable of murder. The story is was a boy killed, did he kill himself, or did he die by accident? And buried deep in the background, but surfacing more towards the end, is the cop with the troubled past. He is surrounded by completely corrupt colleagues on the local police force who are all taking payoffs from the expensive boarding school to cover up the grisly events. It all works extremely well, is gripping, moody, and well-crafted, and has a haunting after-taste.

4-Eyes I really liked this and have no idea why it was never in theaters.Yes, you have to think a bit and pull together the story lines for added meaning. A few have remarked that the Jennifer Ehle character was unnecessary, but I don't agree, and I even liked the abruptness of the attraction between her character and Burns'.Their relationship and the thwarted relationship between the girl student and the hazing victim are meant to be contrasted. There is that old saying applied often to love, "Carpe diem -- seize the day." In other words, when love comes calling, don't rationalize it away.The young couple did (at least, she did), and the older couple almost does too.The ambiguous ending of the movie leave the viewer with plenty to think about. I wonder, for instance, why the victim hyperventilated for so long before jumping in the river. I took it to mean he did not intend to drown, but perhaps to do something Houdini-like instead. I also loved the look of it, like a beat-up town in Maine whose entire tax base is a snooty school that has no use for the town except to cover up for it when things go wrong.Yeah, I just liked it.