Such a frustrating disappointment

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

A family is torn apart with grief when the eldest son is killed in a car crash. All the members of the family deal with the loss in different ways, alienating each other in the process. Things get even more complicated when a young woman turns up, pregnant with the dead son's child.For a lot of the time, 'The Greatest' is a very depressing movie. There's a lot of crying, or people on the verge of crying, or people trying their best not to cry, and that isn't the most pleasant viewing experience in the world. However, to give credit where credit's due, writer/director Shana Feste has done a solid job of making it engaging and watchable. The subject matter is very interesting – how do a mother and father cope when their son dies? How does a young boy cope without his older brother? How does a young woman cope without the love of her life? Feste does a very good job of portraying the different expressions of grief and, while it's a bit depressing, it's also a bit cathartic.Annoyingly though, the film starts to go a bit downhill in the final third. There's a since of harsh reality in that first two-thirds, but it gets a bit hokey towards the end. The film is immediately predictable, which is tough to avoid. But rather than offer some surprises, the movie gives you exactly what you expected, and does it with a healthy dose of Hollywood-esque melodrama.Probably the most interesting character is Grace Brewer, played by Susan Sarandon. Obsessed with knowing every detail about her son's death, she seems to border on insanity at times. Ryan (Johnny Simmons) is also excellent as the younger brother, who is living in denial. It is a subtle performance from the young actor, and his eventual breakdown is one of the most emotional moments of the entire film.And then you have the big let-down and the big show-stealer. The let-down first: Pierce Brosnan. The guy makes a great 007, a great one. But here, he felt really out of place. Brosnan is a good actor, don't get me wrong, but he has an AWFUL American accent and just isn't emotive enough. And on the opposite end of the spectrum is Carey Mulligan, the show-stealer. I love watching this girl act; she is a fantastic actress who never seems to put a step wrong. While her character in the movie might not have a lot of depth, she still manages to breathe life into it. Her personal journey is the one I felt most attached to and, again, it's predictable but interesting.'The Greatest' is a very typical independent movie. A strong cast with good performances, an unconventional story that's solidly told, but with a number of flaws that stops it from getting better commercial success. It does have enough to warrant a watch, though. You might even shed a tear or two.

This tear-jerker was diverting enough, though it follows the usual trajectory of movies about coping with grief. 1) Death of a loved one; 2)survivors respond in different ways, causing bitter conflict; 3) something warm and fuzzy intervenes (in this case, the dead son's girlfriend gives birth to his child); 4) dramatic realizations, with many tears spent, resolve the conflict, leaving everyone sadder but wiser.So alright, I was entertained anyway. Most appealing were the youngsters, played by Carey Mulligan, Johnny Simmons, and Miles Robbins. Pierce Brosnan was interesting until the obligatory scene where he breaks down in his wife's arms, one of the more grotesque crying jags on film.Susan Sarandon had a thankless part as the mother who refuses to let everyone else mourn in peace.The brief appearance of Michael Shannon three-quarters of the way into the movie was like finding a gold coin on a vacant lot. He is just a wonderful actor.

Confusingly, Muhammad Ali is nowhere to be seen in this film. Or if he was in there I'd fallen asleep before he appeared.A waste of a good cast. All of them tried their best, with the exception of Susan Sarandon who just played her standard 'Miserable Mother 1' role as seen in several other films.The plot was implausible to say the least. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during the script writing sessions. Didn't anyone realise this was pants? "Wait a minute...you can't do that !" We have a car crash. The boy dies. The parents (and the cops, fire service,medics and coroner ) fail to notice that a girl was in the car with him. How ? Did she walk off, or something ? Or get kidnapped by aliens ?Were none of her belongings, purse, blood etc. found in the wreak ? Then the loopy mother spends all her time trying to interview the driver of the OTHER CAR, not the other person IN THE CAR, who has magically vanished. Somehow the other driver managed to have a chat with her son while succumbing to a cerebral bleed ( like you do ) and falling into an inconvenient coma.Then it gets worse. The girlfriend turns up at the funeral, wearing a huge and obvious arm cast. No one asks who the hell she is. Then later she turns up at their house saying she is carrying the son's unborn child. Dad is completely shocked. Not even having noticed her at the funeral, never mind in the hospital where she must have been taken after the crash.This preposterous plot could only have worked if the car crash had taken place on a frontier between two warring countries. Then the two occupants of the car MIGHT have plausibly ended up in separate hospitals. But this seemed to be set in the USA.Apart from Cary Mulligan acting sexually aroused at the beginning, something very few US actresses would dare do, this film had no merits at all. If you blinked or came in late you would have missed this bit.

There is just entirely too much going on in this picture.Despite the fact that Pierce Brosnan is hopelessly miscast as the husband to a very old looking Susan Sarandon, the film goes on and on and could conceivably rival "Peyton Place."When their son is killed in an auto accident and his girlfriend injured, the parents soon learn she is pregnant. Mother Sarandon is bitchy and refuses to accept the girl. The younger brother meets a girl at grief counseling and they like each other until he finds out something about her. Exhausted, Brosnan appears to have a coronary, but doesn't, while his son lights up a joint in another room.The guy involved in the fatal accident comes out of a coma and tells Sarandon that her son's last words were that he loved the girlfriend. When Sarandon hears these words, suddenly she looks better and everyone is happy. Come on. We know that people deal with grief differently but this is a little too much to take.