ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

InspireGato Film Perfection

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

dogatemyhomework I don't normally write reviews on here, but after seeing that nearly all of them praised the movie, I couldn't in all good conscience keep quiet. So, here we go:Who gave Tony Cinciripini a budget? Surely they'd read the script before handing over the money! This film is quite gob-smacking in its incompetence. The dialogue is so horrendous that none of actors have the slightest chance to even remotely act (with the exception of Arquette who's allowed to do the drug-addict thing, and Jolie who's allowed to angrily cry on two occasions). The plot is utter nonsense – it could make sense if it was an 8-hour miniseries that not only allows you to get to know the characters but also gives the film a chance to have something akin to pace. However, at just over 1½ hours, this lack of pace and runtime means we get horribly jarring shifts from an emotional scene to sex to bonding to someone waving around a gun with nothing in between. Add to that some wholly inappropriate music (don't have slow, moody pieces during action scenes!) and an editor who has found the slow motion button but doesn't know when to use it, and we have a full-on car crash of a film. The entire onus has to be on the director / writer. He wrote the terrible dialogue then obviously told the actors how to play it, a large part of which is that if you're not the one talking you have to freeze in place and don't do the slightest thing that might distract them from remembering their lines. Oh, and let's forget about such things as explanation – towards the end (SPOILER) Jolie's character does the following: dumps Patty, apologises to Johnny for wanting to kill him, argues with Liz, tells Johnny she's pregnant with his baby. Erm...what? How did that suddenly happen? A more pertinent question would be – how did any of this happen? Only Arquette was even remotely famous back then, so you can't say that it got released purely on the merits of starring Angelina Jolie. For this film to get made in the first place defies belief. Uwe Boll, Jalal Merhi and Edward D Wood Jr would all tie for The Most Incompetent Director award for sheer consistency, but as an individual prize, I'd have to award it to Tony for this.

Magsel The movie sucked big time, but Angelina's performance was sublime. Like in Girl, Interrupted, but somewhat less perfect. Well, I don't blame her, it's just one of her first movies before she got to the stars.

CasparOZ I am amazed that this film got such a low score. I personally thought it was a very convincing and moving mood piece and was well acted all round. Quite clearly an indie film and a character study but has a plot that moves along quite quickly and gives plenty of opportunity for reflection without ever moralising or passing judgement or overtly trying to make a social or political statement. No clear good guys and bad guys but rather interesting and individual characters caught up in a bad situation. Apart from anything else it had a great soundtrack/score and the original song by Rosanna Arquette was fantastic!Perhaps the problem is that Angelina Jolie fans picked this one up for a perve?

niceguyeddy I have always been intrigued with the acting skills of Mekhi Phifer ever since Spike Lee's brilliant Clockers, that's why I remotely enjoyed this film. The cast all around gave good preformances. The problem with it was definetly the way it was filmed and a contadictory message. Actually, there was no message at all, or else it was one burried in clichés. It was exactly like every other "New York-former-gangster" movie, and it had nothing special going for it (as apposed to Clockers, which had a whole underlying plot line to it). No message about Hell's Kitchen at all. This movie was pure mediocracy.C-