How sad is this?

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

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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

The global success and Oscar nominations (and wins) for "L.A. Confidential" ('97) put the neo-noir / crime thriller genre back on the map in terms of Hollywood big productions, featuring major stars and established directors, and several films succeeded, such as "The Black Dahlia" and "Hollywoodland" (both from '06), based on real life cases of infamous murder, some unsolved to this days."Lonely Hearts" from the very same year, tells the real life story of Raymond Martinez Fernandez (played by Jared Leto) and Martha Beck (played by Salma Hayek), the notorious "Lonely Hearts Killers", a couple that during the 40's conned several wealthy widows, by placing ads in magazines, pretending to be brother and sister. As the delusional and sociopath Martha became more possessive towards Raymond, she starts killing his fiancees, afraid that he could fell in love with one of their unsuspecting victims. Det. Elmer Robinson (John Travolta), a newly widower and his partner, Det. Charles Hilderbrandt (James Gandolfini) with the help of Det. Reilly (Scott Caan), are tasked to investigate the case...Screenwriter & documentary director, Todd Robinson, the real life grandson of Det. Elmer Robinson, made here his screen debut directing a theatrical released motion picture, which also penned the screenplay due to his emotional connection to the real life case, via his own grandfather, who told him curiosities about it since his early age.Robinson made good use of his Art Department: all the props; the sets' decoration; the hairstyles and costumes; the cars and the planes, are very faithful invoking the 40's Era and the movie looks and feels it visually. For its medium budget it's a hit.The screenplay could have been better handled, way too much screentime was given to the pair of detectives and their own private lifes, instead of focusing it more on the killers, enhancing the couple's wicked behavior and their descent into doom. The added humor beetween Gandolfini and Scott Caan's characters always picking on each other, is somewhat funny at the beginning, but ultimately, repetitive and unnecessary.The cinematography is only appropriate as so is the direction, it have a certain TV feeling to it, maybe due to the budgetary reasons, it lacks wide shots and the violence is also toned down, with the noble exception of one well staged sordid scene involving the infamous couple and Alice Krige's character.The editing obviously suffered from scenes left out in the cutting room floor, maybe to shorten the movie to be more audience friendly, but that affects the storytelling with several breaks in the narrative and an anti-climatic (not so) grand finale.John Travolta is okay in the lead role of Elmer Robinson, with a good supporting turn from the late great James Gandolfini, even if his character was seriously underdeveloped, with both sharing good on-screen chemistry, proved earlier in "Get Shorty" ('95). Scott Caan is in training mode for his future role of Danny Williams in the hit TV show, "Hawaii Five-0" and Laura Dern did her best out of a pointless character, Travolta's colleague at the Force and, secretly, his mistress. Jared Leto as Ray Fernandez is over the top hammy, too cartoon-ish for a movie like this, almost shading his ridiculous performance in "Panic Room" ('02), but Salma Hayek saves the movie in the acting department, offering a commited performance as the wicked Martha Beck, had the movie being better she could have possibly been a contender for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.In short, "Lonely Hearts" deserves, at least, a watch for completists of neo-noir, "killers on the run" and period pieces, it's a kind of hybrid beetween "Badlands" & "The Black Dahlia" and even if it isn't as good as the previous adaptation of this story to the big screen, "The Honeymoon Killers" ('70), which was more faithful to the real life case and more focused on the couple, it have Salma in one of her best performances to date and some good cinematic moments...

I've just watched this film on YouTube so the resolution wasn't great, however what an atmospheric well acted movie. The cops are hard boiled flawed individuals and the perpetrators were truly sociopathic. The portrayal the evil couple Ray and Martha knocked the 60s portrayal of Bonnie & Clyde into a cocked hat & probably is only equalled by Martin and Cissy in Badlands. This film didn't follow the formula of having a crescendo like conclusion, but things like this don't in real life, no one wins and all that's left is a big hole of sadness and I think that's what this film does so well. It emphasises the complete self absorption of the perpetrators and the tiny world they inhabit between themselves and demonstrates the evil they do when they interact with the real world. Well worth 8.5 a great telling of a true crime!

Lonely Hearts (2006)A steady, interesting, colorful crime movie packed with both great old tropes from the film noir days and lots of familiar tricks. Amazingly, it's based on a true story from post-war America that goes way way way beyond the slimmed up version here. The result is good, yes, but never mesmerizing, never a complete surprise, and never up to the potential of the either the source material or the talented cast. The very dependence of well known formulas for a kind of classic look and feel is what holds it back, because we know those formulas so well. The one aspect to the movie that is forcibly modern is the one that feels so forced it's almost pandering to a contemporary audience--lots of open swearing and sexual references in a manner not really "right" for a 1951 America.Several lead actors are terrific. Salma Hayek, once she arrives, is an edgy bad girl, a woman with little moral code and a comfort level with blood and manipulation that makes an old school femme fatale look like schoolroom stuff. Her bad boy companion, Jared Leto, at first comes off as a Robert Downey Jr. wannabe, but he gradually hardens up his edges and by the end is pretty believable as a cocksure murderous idiot. The two cops, John Travolta and James Gandolfini, are a great pair, the one restrained and more in tune with the criminals, the other the sidekick with a good heart. (They might be modeled after, say, Glenn Ford and William Bendix, as two 1951 actors who could have pulled off the same roles with more conviction.)The filming, the editing, the pace, the sets, the old cars, the interior and exterior location shoots, all of the nuts and bolts are in place here for a good movie. (Of these, the photography is the most routine, partly because of how it's directed, as in the last scene when the cops swarm the house--it could have been really exciting.) But overall it's the script--the script, not the story--that holds it all back. The parallel plots of the two criminals in their love affair crime spree and the cops on their trail is clear and fine, but unrevealing. The events happen, and we sort of know how it will end. And it does (not to give away anything!). If you want the true facts, go to the really long but readable account at trutv.com and type in the Lonely Hearts. As a quick and hopefully helpful movie comparison, you can look at recent films like "Road to Perdition" or "Shutter Island" and see how a period piece film can brim with originality and better filming. A movie comes closer to this kind of familiar quality, based on older classic Hollywood models, is "Public Enemies" with Johnny Depp, though that one had some really beautiful moments in the photography. And what about that title? It is derived from the male killer's original tactic for getting money, which is given a comic treatment at the beginning of the movie--he writes to lonely women, gets them to fall in love with him, and steals their assets.A final revealing note: the director is the grandson of the cop who led the original investigation into the crimes. That means he's really well placed emotionally, but as a director he's really incomplete. It's amazing, in fact, that he got the budget and talent he did with such a short track record. Opportunity squandered? Partially. Give it a chance.

Talk about flying under the radar... No doubt the strong sexual content has had something to do with this: we may be stupid and ultraviolent in this schizo country of ours, but we're also prudes. Beautifully written and directed, LONELY HEARTS gives John Travolta yet one more golden opportunity to be Golden. Likewsie, Gandolfini, whose performance goes hand-in-hand with Travolta's. Hyek does what she can with her role, but the fact that the character was changed from an overweight wallflower to... well, Selma Hyek... is a detriment. One could've (at least superficially) understood her obsession with holding on to "her man" if she'd been portrayed as the dumpy matron she was in Life: as it stands, Hyek seems shoe-horned into the part. (Kathy Bates would've been a much better choice.) Despite this, the movie resonates. It's hard to believe it wasn't more highly touted (I don't even recall seeing it advertised anywhere)...