Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

James It's actually quite hard to fully account for the failure of John Maybury's "The Edge of Love", and even harder to pin the blame for that failure. A film that revolves around the acting of Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy would seem to have a lot going for it, and the (for me) unknown Matthew Rhys also does a great job of playing that Welsh master of wordplay Dylan Thomas.The four of them here act out a true story which culminates in a dramatic - and certainly filmworthy - event that actually happened (and can for example be read about in a Daily Telegraph article of June 9th 2008 entitled "My granddad tried to kill Dylan Thomas").And - apart from the superb (if at times coarse) "Under Milk Wood", Thomas gave us the just-unreservedly-superb "Do not go gentle into that good night" - possibly the best and most meaningful poem ever written in the history of the world. Plenty of other Dylan Thomas works demonstrate abundantly well the guy's enormous talent.I suppose "Do not go gentle..." itself gives a clue or two, for Thomas did indeed choose to "rage, rage". Obsessed with things tough and macho (when potentially he was perhaps not that much of either), he insisted that his life should primarily be devoted to womanising, smoking and drinking and - quite often also - to being profoundly annoying and childishly silly. He thus did much to contribute to his own death at the ridiculous age of 39.All of this is made fully clear in the film, and one cannot fault Matthew Rhys for the work he does here, which is in many ways excellent.But, somehow, we don't want to know...All the more we don't want to know given the wartime setting, in which Thomas more than once sounds off arrogantly about men in uniform not even knowing what they are fighting for (ironic really, since if ever there was a war in which ordinary people did indeed know what they were fighting for it was 1939-45).One of those men in uniform is the Cillian Murphy character of Capt. William Killick of the Special Operations Executive, a true and genuine hero who Murphy plays straight and well here. Killick entices Vera Phillips (the Keira character) away from her role as occasional hanger-on with Thomas and his wife Caitlin (the Sienna Miller character), and from that point of view he was just doing what came naturally in a straightforward "young officer pressed for time falls for pretty and sweet girl" kind of story.Unfortunately, necessarily, he soon after marrying went off to Greece (behind the lines), saw plenty of action, and came back to Wales to find out that the three others had been living in two cottages there for those several years of his absence, and spending his military pay, and generally doing a whole lot of not very much. Needless to say, that upset Killick more than a bit, and he did become a bit trigger happy at that moment ... and the case went to court.That is an amazing story but one that you wade a long way through "The Edge of Love" in order to reach, and in fact this part of the film is rather played down compared with interminable earlier parts that are often offputting and sometimes also tedious.And ultimately that's (I suspect) just because we don't want the light of too much truth to shine in on the legend here.Perhaps somehow the Director is at fault here - but mostly because he is perhaps overambitious in what he thinks an audience (or at least an ordinary audience member) is prepared to tolerate.

phd_travel With a WW2 setting, a famous poet's story and good leads this movie should have been a really good one. I am a fan of both actresses Keira and Sienna and they do look quite lovely here. Keira looks most beautiful when she isn't smiling. She is a surprisingly good singer and it's quite fascinating to watch her sing. The Blitz parts are quite sudden and effective. The down side is the story itself isn't very pleasant. This love triangle is a bit painful to watch. I understand it is based on true events but the characters are realistically flawed. The mental breakdown of Cillian Murphy's character is quite frightening. And Keira's acting is quite good here. Sienna is alright too although her role is simpler. It shows Dylan Thomas in quite a realistic self centered way. Matthew Rhys is good as the selfish poet. I can see why the movie wasn't more successful. The story is unpleasant. The screenplay relied too much on rushed dialog to lay out key plot elements and it was hard to grasp what was happening sometimes. Maybe the direction could have been clearer when establishing the story lines and major events.

simon-brittan This is probably the worst film I have ever had the misfortune to see. There is no discernible plot, the script might have been written by a twelve-year-old, and the acting is deplorable. Above all, it seems to have nothing to do with either Dylan or Caitlin Thomas. This film buys into all the clichés about the Thomas' life together, and gives those viewers unfamiliar with the facts a picture that bears as good as no resemblance to the truth. The pretentiousness of this film is nauseating; I can only assume that none of the actors or actresses had ever read anything of Dylan or Caitlin Thomas. had they bothered to do so, they might have spotted the misquoted lines of Thomas' poetry that are scattered throughout the 'dialogue' at the most inopportune moments. this picture is deplorable. Miss it.

artisticengineer After I saw this I concluded that it was most likely a chick flick; afterward I found out that Keira's mother wrote the screenplay so that pretty much confirmed it. However, a chick flick can have some appeal to men; this one does not and really seems not to appeal that well either to women (looking at the dismal box office receipts). One item that I believe both genders agree upon is the stupidity of the the scene, in the movie, whereby an analogy is made between the pain of childbirth to the pain of a limb being amputated w/o anesthesia. Though men do not undergo the pain of childbirth we understand that it is a painful process; yet it is a natural pain whereas an amputation certainly is not! Women understand this even better. I suspect some woman was trying to make a feminist statement that is in poor taste. In fact, a lot of things in this movie are in very poor taste. Though movies nowadays are known for having poor taste this one really "excels" in that department. This could have been a good movie that shows the struggles of Dylan Thomas during WWII; and how strong the sentiment was against men who somehow managed to avoid serving in the military then. Keira's screen writing mother tries to show how this sentiment was used against Dylan but really muddles this. Instead we get a chick flick about how two young mothers bond together; sort of. In a way. Perhaps. Somehow. Of note is the fact that a soldier (the husband of the friend of Dylan's wife) is sent back home after serving in combat; yet it is unclear if the war has ended!! A lot of things about this movie are similarly unclear; and though I have stated that already I will do so again as it seems to be the central motif of this mess.