BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

SnoopyStyle Successful shoe designer Lisa (Laura Linney) dies from cancer leaving her husband Peter (Liam Neeson) and her daughter Abigail (Romola Garai). Peter is a successful software entrepreneur. He discovers a voice message from a mystery man looking for his late wife and he cracks her password for a hidden cache of love pics. His security team uncovers her lover as Ralph Cortez. He goes to Milan and befriends Ralph without acknowledging his wife. Abigail begs him to stop his angry obsession.This is a great cast but the drama isn't there. There is no tension. There is a possibility of a dramatic turn but it goes in the opposite direction. There is a surprising reveal but it doesn't add to the drama. There is a message here as long as the audience is awake to see it. This is a short movie and yet it feels overly long.

James Hitchcock The plot twist is a cinematic device which we normally associate with the thriller genre. You all know the sort of thing I'm thinking of- a villain believed to be dead is suddenly revealed to be alive and the hero in mortal peril from him, or the hero's best friend/girlfriend/boss turns out to have betrayed him and to be in league with the villains. "The Other Man", however, is film that makes use of a similar twist ending, even though it belongs to a very different genre, being a psychological melodrama rather than a thriller. As the film opens we are introduced to Peter and Lisa, a seemingly happily married middle-aged couple with an adult daughter, Abigail. They live in a large house in the Cambridgeshire countryside and both have professional careers, she as a shoe designer, he in the computer industry. As the story moves on, however, Peter begins to suspect that his wife may have taken a lover. (She by this time appears to have disappeared from the action). Documents and photographs found on Lisa's computer suggest that Peter's suspicions are justified and that Lisa's lover is a man named Ralph living in Milan, where Lisa frequently travelled on business. Desperate to find out more about his wife's lover, he manages to track Ralph down in Milan and meets him in a café without revealing his true identity. The two men play chess together and talk; in the course of their conversation Ralph begins to speak about his relationship with Lisa, unaware that he is talking to Lisa's husband. Ralph begins to see Peter as a friend, but Peter is obsessed with vengeance against the man who has cuckolded him. And then comes the twist. (I won't say what it is). The film was directed by Sir Richard Eyre, perhaps best known in British as a theatrical director, but it does not have the stagey, claustrophobic feel of certain films made by directors whose primary work has been in the theatre. It is, however, worth mentioning that Sir Richard also worked on the BBC series "Play for Today" in the seventies and eighties, as "The Other Man" has something of the intimate feel of a television play- in fact it often seems closer to that genre than it does to the cinematic feature which it ostensibly is. That remark is not intended as a putdown. The television play was a fine dramatic and literary genre in its own right, and it was a sad day for British drama when in 1985 the BBC scrapped "Play for Today", and reduced the role of one-off plays in its output, in order to concentrate more on soap operas and serials. (Channel 4 did to some extent try to cover the gap in the one-off market with its "Film on 4" series, but there is a difference between a television play and a made-for-television film)Advocating the return of "Play for Today", or something like it, to British television screens, the commentator and newspaper columnist Jan Moir wrote "A good piece of drama looks at the human condition, and tells us something we should know about ourselves," and this I think is what "The Other Man" does. It is not really the greatest film of its three major stars, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Antonio Banderas, all of whim have given better performances than they do here, especially Neeson ("Schindler's List", "Nell", "K-19 The Widowmaker").and Linney ("The Truman Show", "The House of Mirth"), and the twist ending can seem like a bit of a gimmick. Yet I think that it works as a psychological drama, one that explores some of the darker areas of the human psyche such as jealousy and the desire for revenge, but one which ends on a note of hope and reconciliation. The dark nature of the emotions involved is emphasised by Eyre's restricted palette, dominated by browns and greys, giving the film a sombre, autumnal feel. It is in some ways a very modern film, with that quintessentially modern invention, the computer, central to the plot, but it is also one that explores the timeless aspects of human nature. A play for today. 6/10

is-goldstone Very disappointed with the negative reviews as a good modern film doesn't require the viewer to be spoon fed with simple bite sized story but gets one thinking about the plot and will provide the most satisfaction on second, or even third, viewing, as this film inevitably does. The acting is superb by all key players, particularly the three main protagonists. Contrary to some reviewers, the action was not that hard to follow and, as with all good detective stories, held the viewer's attention right up to the very end, as all the pieces in the jigsaw came together, making for the greatest satisfaction, and providing justice for those who were hurt as well for those who did the hurting. I thoroughly enjoyed this film and the music score was also highly commendable. A true masterpiece.

MBunge In sexual terms, The Other Man is like having some pretty good foreplay but when you finally get around to doing the deed, the man's erection completely disappears. It slowly builds your anticipation, only to leave you with nothing but disappointment and frustration.Peter (Liam Neeson) is a successful businessman. Lisa (Laura Linney), his beautiful wife, is a shoe designer for high fashion. Abigail (Romola Garai), his daughter, is in love with a scruffy looking guy of whom Peter disapproves. After a cryptic post-fashion show conversation with Lisa, the film jumps ahead to Lisa being dead. That's when Peter discovers she was having an affair with a Spaniard named Ralph (Antonio Banderas). Peter compulsively seeks out Ralph (pronounced Rayf) and discovers her lover doesn't know that Lisa has passed away. Peter befriends Ralph and gets him to talk about Lisa and their love, seemingly as a prelude to killing him. But then Peter discovers the truth of who Ralph is and the reality of his feelings for Lisa and…well, I'm not really sure how to describe what happens after that. I mean, I could describe it, but you'll think I'm making it up because it's really that ridiculous.The first half of this film is quite effective. It treads a line between being an emotional drama and a thriller, always leaving you in of suspense about what's going happen. It subtly defines Peter as a man who's been unable to function since his wife's death until he finds a purpose in her adultery. You can see him wrap his arms around Lisa's betrayal as though it's brought her back to him and you can feel the tension build in him as he descends on the man who cuckolded him.After delightfully tantalizing the viewer, however, The Other Man goes irretrievably flaccid. All the emotion, all the investment, all the interest is killed deader than Napoleon's boner. That's because at the moment when the movie finally brings Peter and Ralph face-to-face, it goes into a string of intermittent flashbacks that continue through the entire 2nd half of the film. It's flashback after flashback of Lisa and Ralph, Lisa and Peter, Lisa and Abigail and it just destroys the story because all of the flashbacks displace the conflict you've been waiting the whole 1st half of the movie to see. You want to see Peter and Ralph interact. You want to see Peter play a cat-and-mouse game with the man he intends to kill. You want to see Ralph slowly start to wonder who this stranger is who keeps asking about Lisa. You want to see anger and jealously and hatred slowly seep into their conversations before exploding into the truth. And none of that really happens because the damned flashbacks get in the way. Peter and Ralph don't have one extended talk that doesn't get taken over by a flashback and it utterly derails all of the momentum built up in the story. To use sexual terms again, it's like watching an x-rated movie and in the middle of every sex scene, an image of your grandma pops up on screen.Now, Laura Linney does get naked, which remains a very good thing. She, Liam Neeson and Antonio Banderas also try hard, but Neeson and Banderas' characters are so frequently interrupted and displaced by all the damned flashbacks that they never get the chance to do more than sputter.The Other Man is half good, but the other half is so vexing that it ruins the whole thing. Unless you're somebody who only likes foreplay, don't bother with this motion picture.