Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

tomsview Wim Wender's film meanders through a number of loosely connected sequences with the actors seemingly deprived of sleep for days before the shoot in order to deliver performances that are the epitome of low key.Different strands of the story are slowly introduced: Mike Max (Bill Pullman), a Hollywood producer who makes gory action thrillers; Cat (Traci Lind), a stunt woman on his films; his wife Paige (Andy McDowell) who is about to leave him.A seemingly disparate strand involves surveillance expert Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) who uses cameras located around Los Angeles to spy on just about everything. Then there is Detective Block (Loren Dean) who is called in when Max disappears.It all goes into the blender, but as each character is introduced, it opens up sequences that constantly pull away from the main thread of the story, which has Max inadvertently receiving a secret document. Among the distractions are scenes involving Bering's father (Sam Fuller), an acting school, and the making of one of Max's films featuring a recreation of the café in Edward Hopper's painting "Nighthawks". The soundtrack by Ry Cooder and others has a detached quality bearing little relationship to the action on screen.Maybe it looked better on paper, but old Wim is such a lover of the obscure that he often cuts away when anything exciting begins to happen. It's hard to pinpoint where you realise the film isn't working; it just slowly slides into inertia. Without giving them away, the surprises at the end seem like a frantic attempt to breathe life into a body that we have already pronounced dead.The film feels a little like "Mulholland Dr.", but of course it was made a few years before Lynch's film. Along with the obscurification, it's probably the setting, the unusual hit men, the association with filmmaking and the acting auditions that does it.If the point of the story was how in the attempt to end violence, surveillance methods and powerful government bodies end up creating more, then it's a ponderous message.The film was in that run of movies that featured interweaving stories that collide at the end; "Magnolia" and "Crash", as well as Altman's brilliant "Short Cuts". However it's a complex format that doesn't really attract me to watching them again. That goes double for "The End of Violence".

MOSSBIE "Whim" should have seen Coppola's "The Conversation" one more time before venturing into the Hollywood film world and his fascination with gas driven leaf blowers. He makes so many assumptions and is captivated by the Latino culture which only serves to add to the affectation of any intent he may have had in his loathing of violence. He fell in love with one of his own quotes about "Sax and Violins" a few years back and then tried to build a conspiratorial plot with absolutely no clarity or direction (as in where did he want to go) and in the process assembles a kind of Altman, Lynch cast of actors who do nothing but take up space without being memorable. The waste of art direction he employs in the Edward Hopper set and the never ending monotony of the scene played there is like a foreigner enjoying his first trip to Universal City in its naiveté....he eats up Hollywood and its seduction like a giant pretzel which is what this film resembles in shape.Andie MacDowell must never, ever, ever reveal her body again.She is pear shaped and must know it.

jojairus This film is more about people adapting to change than about thrills. Bill Pullman is a very successful producer who uses people. His wife decides to leave him, but at the same time he gets caught up in a bizarre plan to introduce a pre-emptive high-tech crime-intervention system based on the ubiquitous "Big Brother" cameras that we've all become so used to in the developed world. All though he actually knows nothing yet, he's targeted for assasination. He finds refuge with his Mexican gardeners, and, while trying to discover why he's now hunted he goes through an epiphany of his own. This film is full of lovely characterisations. It's much more than a conspiracy movie.

prairiem I'm not surprised that a child would not understand this movie. To me it was very meaningful, but only in terms of lived experience in jobs and politics. It's really "Brave New World," where authority figures keep order by putting up cameras everywhere and intervening to eliminate anyone who is disorderly or criminal. Violence is a huge preoccupation, but only tolerated as make-believe -- but the make-believe gets confused with real violence. Control, transgression, power are the pivots of the well-to-do. Ashcroft stuff.But the Mexican and immigrant families offer a warmer, truer alternative. In the end, they are more powerful because they are free and can think. The Kinko's episode, in which the police are defeated from taking control by their own preconceptions, is a good example. As underlings, laborers, the Mexicans understand what's at stake and they are everywhere, invisible to their employers. The intellectual technician doesn't catch on until it's too late.I'm told that what I saw was a re-cut and that the early version was indeed chaotic with a lot of loose ends. All I can say is that now this is one of the videos I rewatch and ponder.