People are voting emotionally.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"The Burning Plain", directed and written by Guillermo Arriaga, follows the template of Arriaga's earlier screenplays ("21 Grams", "Babel"). Here we're treated to a non-linear, multi-strand narrative in which events unfold out of sequence. Unlike the films of Atom Egoyan, which analytically do the same thing, Arriaga's tone is melodramatic, sentimental, and overly impressed with its familiar soap opera elements.The film contains a number of big-name actresses (Kim Basinger, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlize Theron), all of whom are stuck in a plot comprised of much adultery, affairs and secret rendezvous. Families are torn apart and new relationships come together, before the film ends on a note of tragedy. The film contains some excellent aerial footage, Arriaga's camera following New Mexican crop dusters.6/10 – Worth one viewing.

a very strong story.at the beginning I think there's two separate story line.when Sylvia calls the lying man Santiago everything falls into its place.There is something I find not plausible.when Mariana lets pipe loose what does she think will happen? obviously it's gonna blow entire trailer.this aside, movie tells a woman's life who is gonna have to face his past which she tries to escape all her life.she kills her mother and her lover.she keeps this secret herself and tries to cope with this by sleeping every man she meets which is a way of hiding her guilt.she also tries to share this guilt by burning his hand with her mother's lover son.Just to make her history to present a sign of love.however it is in reality not a love, a guilt.she tries to hurt himself escaping being loved by a man.she can't bear this pain and leaves his baby with his father behind.she maybe treats her baby a product of this guilt.when she learns her daughter had a scar when she was 3 years old she later asks her forgiveness,feeling that guilt again.this movie is full of drama.it takes you from a woman's life who had breast cancer to another woman's life who had killed her own mother just to punish.Afterwards she tries to punish herself.movie ends without a resolution.I wonder whether she's gonna tell him how she killed her own mother and his father? the father of her daughter? even her daughter?

Great cast! Everyone gives a zillion percent and there is some exceptional choice casting too, though the actors weren't used to their potential and their roles even came across as superfluous; but okay, I was just happy to see those specific actors.Some of the characters are too much a caricature, especially the character played by Charlize Theron. She's such a cliché, I'm afraid to say. There's something 'prodigal' about Sylvia/Mariana, both as an adult and as a teenage girl.The story builds nicely though slow; sometimes it's too slow and drags for no apparent reason. The problem is that there are bits and pieces of the storyline that are also left dangling. They tie up nicely on the one hand but then, you are left feeling that they will continue to be tools for the future insight of the characters but then they're not. So those arcs were like dangling participles in the narrative, as far as I was concerned.This film though, as I mention in my tag line is a perfect example of how flashbacks (and dream sequences) are often a VERY tricky business in a film and if they're not properly shuffled into the sequences, it can make the film disjointed and cluttered. This film has those moments but because of all the rest of the things it has going for it (landscape, good actors and a partly interesting premise) it makes you want to give it a chance and wait out the fog to get to the cliffhanger.

The messy back-and-forth in time action is not the worst problem of this production. There is some intensity which could make this a not-too-bad movie anyway. The actors are not to blame either. On first impression the plot is about love, more or less.But there is a hidden agenda here: both blond women (mom and daughter) are presented as whores. On top of that, the blond mother is also Christian, praying every evening. But of course a hypocrite, since she is committing adultery. The Christian white dad (who fathered 4 children) is actually an impotent male... Enough, I'll never watch anything else made by this Arriaga guy.