Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A Masterpiece!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

I would think the book probably better than the movie although I never read it. The movie lost its focus half-way through. This movie never made into the mainstream release. Over the top terrorist plot might have some bearings. The director possibly thought it reflected the current events. However, it became avoidable by the audience. I also think it could do without to make the storyline whole. There were a lot of borrowing ideas all over the places. It's like I was watching "Dark Places" again. Sometimes, you have to trim the branches to help the tree to grow. Some reviews did not like American actress playing the lead role. I would say the studio had it released in the US in mind and with the American taking on the lead role would draw the audience. It just never made that far. It cost a lot to make the explosive scenes. I felt it was totally a waste. If they just stuck on the love scenes, that might help to get into the main distribution.Adapting the events bigger than the screen could carry is not feasible. This one is an example of it.

I'm going to start this review by making an effort in being generous and understanding, pointing out, that a possible reason for the galactic difference between the novel and the motion picture, is that the former was written one year before the actual terrorist attack on London on July the seventh 2005, while the latter was shot four years after, which could explain the impossibility to maintain certain features of the novel, which I am going to further analise in a second. Having specified that I now feel free to unleash the beast. First a plot summary as brief as possible: A working class woman, with an over the top personality, portrayed as a sort of Bridget Jones epigone, has her husband and her four year old son killed in a suicide bombing attack at the "Emirates Stadium". This is the only snippet the movie and the novel share; Afterwards they take two totally different directions. The book depicts a dismal, dark, gloomy, bleak , post apocalyptic setting, from the point of view of the female protagonist, in the form of a letter addressed to Osama Bin Laden. Chris Cleave, a Guardian columnist, literally paints pictures with his words, showing a society in decay, with particular concern about class conflict and government deceptions. Some claim that the only merit of the movie is to show the place where the book protagonist lives; that is only partially true, due to the colourful and imaginative writing of the novel, which is more than sufficient for the reader to form a picture in his head. The book also features modern,highly twisted and thrilling eroticism, which is the reason for this review's title. The novel follows the rules established by the late and great J. G. Ballard in his 1973 milestone in the history of modern literature, "The Atrocity Exhibition". Ballard, who worked for BBC at that time, and must be considered as one of the founders of British contemporary media, highlighted a sick connection, between catastrophes such as atomic explosions or car accidents and the release of sexual energy. Of course in the novel the perspective is turned upside down, the woman reminiscences images of the bombing while finding herself in sex related situations, but the connection is exactly just the very same. The film does not cover any of these aspects: Politics, Society and twisted eroticism are almost completely neglected, and replaced by a sappy soap operistic piece of trash, which makes Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbour" shine as a Stanley Kubrick motion picture. The doom setting of the novel is replaced by the brightiest, most childish, shallow and dull cinematography I have ever seen. The editing, especially towards the second half, is completely random. The soundtrack was probably written by some British equivalent of those self nominated, self righteous Italian "pop classical artists" such as Ludovico Einaudi or Giovanni Allevi. An unhonourable mention, concerning the acting and then we're done. Matthew Macfayden stars as Terrence Butcher, the head of the anti- terrorism task force. His acting can be compared to a first grade child, reading the list of the grocery store, or to a freshly retired ski alpine world champion turned into acting for the first and last time in his life. Fortunately they probably digitally removed the paper from where he was reading his lines in post production. To sum up, if you have already read the novel, stay far away from the movie, otherwise the book is a must read, therefore I highly recommend it.

This movie so wants to be an epic drama about the failure of terrorism to stifle the human spirit in the face of mankind's determination to ... uh ... have more babies and ... uh, make uplifting music and, uh .... babies' cries drown out hate and ... uh ....I don't want to mock this well intentioned movie too much. For one thing, Michelle Williams delivers a ferocious performance as a wife and mother whose grief will not be denied.Williams is simply "young mother." She has a boy toddler and a husband on the police bomb squad who comes home exhausted every night and falls asleep in front of the TV watching his soccer team, Arsenal. One night, she tucks hubby in on the couch and goes down to the local pub. There, she meets a reporter and they click. She is sex starved. They have sex.Next day, hubby takes the boy to the stadium for an Arsenal game, giving "young mother" an opportunity for another liaison with reporter. The two liaise, and are well into sex with the TV on the Arsenal game when a terrorist bomb explodes in the stadium, killing thousands, including her husband and boy.She races to the scene. Debris falls on top of her. She wakes up in the hospital covered in lacerations. As she heals, and gets out of the hospital, she goes on a quest. She is consumed with rage and guilt.This is an incredibly good scenario to begin a movie and it has a powerful actress to carry it forward, but somewhere along the way it decides it does not want to be a thriller or a melodrama or even a conventional drama, but an inspirational Hallmarkian story about the triumph of love.OK, maybe the cries of a newborn English baby will drown out the rants of mad dog jihadists. Or, perhaps, political issues are involved. Hmmm.

Having knocked us all out in 2004 in LAND OF PLENTY by Wim Wenders, here Michelle Williams proves that she is truly supernatural. She gives one of the most gut-wrenching performances ever seen on the screen. And for a Montana gal who had to brush the sagebrush pollen out of her hair before joining polite company, stow her lasso, and pretend to be civilised, how did she manage to master the accent and rhythms and patterns of speech, dress, and mannerisms of those real savages, the gals in those short tart's skirts who live in tower blocks in East London and are married to men who support Arsenal Football Club? (Ugh! Football! Makes me sick! And singing about a football club, how oafish can you get?) It all goes to show that Williams, like good wine, travels well, even though in this case it was from planet to planet. This film is so brilliantly written and directed by Sharon Maguire (formerly a television documentary film maker) that the combination of Maguire and Williams sets the cinema on fire and thereby justifies the film's title admirably. Excellent support is had from Ewan McGregor and Matthew MacFadyen as the two male leads, but all eyes are on Williams. The production values of this film are very high, and it is easy to be convinced that the big terrorist attack on Wembley Stadium has really happened, as the attack and the aftermath are all so real. However, this is not a film about terrorism, which is merely the backdrop, in the sense that world wars and civil wars have been for so many films in the past, from GONE WITH THE WIND to FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS to MRS. MINIVER. This is a film about people, but especially about Michelle Williams. Only a woman could have directed this. In fact, one is tempted to say that all films with terrorism backgrounds should be directed by women, because they are not tempted as men are to dwell on all the violence for its own sake. With a woman at the helm, this film becomes a people film, but a man would have strayed, taken more interest in guns and corpses and explosions (little boys going bang bang sometimes never grow up, especially when they have a budget and a cameraman handed to them). As a study of searing grief and despair, Williams has our hearts in her mouth, but don't worry, it isn't really a downer, it is simply so spellbinding looking at her and seeing into another dimension. She seems to be a tiny little thing, and it is almost inconceivable that such a small package can carry such a huge explosive power. This film really is an instant contemporary classic.