The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is another masterpiece from the indomitable Wim Wenders. However, it is only a classic, not a hyper-classic like 'Paris, Texas' (1984) or 'Don't Come Knocking' (2005). Those two films engaged the viewer in desperate anguish and overwhelming emotion from the very first moments and sustained it throughout, whereas in this film, the emotional intensity and involvement only grab the viewer in the last third of the story. This is partly because the film was written and filmed so quickly, with no time for deep maturation of plot structure in order to discover subtler ways to pull the viewer in earlier. The title is ironical and comes from a song by Leonard Cohen, which is used near the end to the usual Wenders devastating effect. He has always been a master at punching us in the solar plexus with his sophisticated use of the best music. Here, as in the succeeding film 'Don't Come Knocking', the searing cinematography of Franz Lustig shows us surfaces beneath which we immediately plunge. The centrepiece of this film is the amazing Michelle Williams. In her, Wenders combines his recurring 'child motif' with his recurring 'angel motif', since Williams plays a character, Lana, who is primarily two things: (1) a 'former child', and (2) currently a working angel. Just as Wenders is probably the only mainstream director who has ever shown a man defecating on screen, in 'Kings of the Road' (1976), so here he may be the only one who has truly shown the intimate moments of silent prayer. And we are not talking of 'The Song of Bernadette' or any sentimental religious picture here, with its simulated devotions and piety, we are talking the real thing. Throughout the film, Williams is shown in extreme closeup whispering her ongoing dialogue with God, saying things like 'Thank you for this day, thank you for this room.' She asks for his blessings and in emergencies even his help. Williams has such extremely unusual personal qualities that she pulls this off completely. She looks like what she is off screen, a reader, a thinker, a collector of first editions. (I'm sure we must bid against each other on Ebay all the time.) Wenders has as usual used his stunning genius for casting to get the perfect match. He has also found another one of his brilliant character actors, always there but always overlooked for years, in John Diehl, to play the paranoid lost uncle, Paul. This is not at all a political film, it is as usual with Wenders a spiritual journey and a revelation of the bleakness at the empty heart of part of the American Dream. What could be emptier than Trona, California, shown here in all its barren devastation, and yet that empty place is where it all comes together, where the richness and redemption of the spirit take place in surroundings so desolate that it can only be The Material World which is being transcended right before our eyes. The ostensible subject of this film is post-September 11 America. But that is only an excuse for the true subject: the human spirit struggling against emptiness, fear, delusion, and loss to achieve some peace, some acceptance, some love and some fulfillment. There is nothing affected about Wim Wenders. He courageously attempts to say the deepest things in the deepest way that the screen allows. It is true that the character Paul is one of the most extreme characters imaginable, a man driven mad by dioxin poisoning and helicopter crashes as a special forces sergeant in Viet Nam. He has taken refuge in reenacting the lost War (which he insists obstinately 'we won') by trying to fight the new enemy, terrorism. He is a one-man surveillance vigilante in a van, who is determined to find the enemy this time and save his country. But it is all a pathetic delusion, and he is slowly and gently brought down from his 'high' into the truth about things by his patient 20 year-old niece whom he has not seen since she was a baby. Eventually, with infinite acceptance and caring, this crazed uncle achieves a grounding in reality after his years of torment, and comes to see the world with the unblinking eyes of Franz Lustig and the sad and tolerant vision of the child-angel. This film is another one of those Wenders miracles.

Having lived in several places and now again in LA, I see more of myself and people I know in this film. It seemed that both characters were extreme in their beliefs and actions. I had to ask whether I knew these characters and the answer was scarily "yes". I related to the young lady as a peace seeker more than the older man as a paranoid vet, but as the film moved forward, I became sympathetic for him, as well. Utterly unexpected, considering my political and cultural beliefs! This film could have been a "B" film. Perhaps on the surface it is. But let it sink in. What's underneath is more than what is obvious in its visual/audio texture. What some may disregard because it is barely palpable is what takes this film beyond the expected. It's been three days since I viewed it. It is still with me.

A must-see for anyone who is either a Wim Wenders fan or a person interested in the fears and hopes of contemporary America. German director in a brilliant way makes us ponder upon all the issues so essential to understanding American reality after 9/11. Ethnic prejudices, stereotypes, homelessness,terrorism, Vietnam war, pursuit for an identity, search for lost relatives - all these components are omnipresent, smoothly woven. Wenders mastery reveals in the fact that he manages to touch upon serious topics and in the same time introduce elements of humor and even grotesque. "Land of plenty" leaves us with the voice of Leonard Cohen and plenty of thoughts about relation between individual and contemporary world.

"Land of Plenty" is a thought-provoking film. How couldn't it be? Wenders, a provocative director, taking on 9/11 and its aftermath? Truly, not to disparage Wenders, a monkey with a digital camera and a placard reading "Tell me about 9/11" could create something worth watching given the subject.In Wenders case, he has made an insular film focusing on two people, Lana (Michelle Williams) and her Uncle Paul (John Diehl), and the after effects of 9/11 upon both. Lana is a painfully naive 20 yr. old Christian who has just returned from a missionary stint in Palestine (where she witnessed 9/11) to work in a Los Angeles mission while searching for evidence justifying vehement, anti-American sentiment abroad. In her possession is a letter written by her recently deceased mom, Paul's sister. Deliverance of the letter compels here to track down her wayward uncle, the letter's addressee. Paul is in his 50s, a shell-shocked, paranoid Vietnam vet, intent on keeping this country safe from the free-roaming terrorists who are, in his eyes, ubiquitous within the City of Angels.Wenders draws these characters in such vivid Blue and Red colors that you would have to have your head up your butt not to see that they represent the mindset of Democrats (Lana) and Republicans (Paul). In fact, in various interviews, and during a Q & A after the 3/31/05 screening I attended, Wenders asserted that this film IS "a political film." Though he feels he has not made a polemical film: he has. You will be hard-pressed not to choose sides while watching the film. As for Wenders, he leaves little doubt as to his choice: true Blue.To that end, one need only take into consideration Wenders' mocking presentation of Paul as a hyper-vigilant nut case roaming L.A. in a beat-up, surveillance-equipment-crammed van in search of terrorist activity. Paul undertakes this toothless work functioning as a self-appointed renegade operative for Homeland Security, who have no connection with him. Paul's right hand man, Jimmy, is a grungy garage mechanic whose only connections to top-secret sources are Internet search engines. They bring to mind as Beavis & Butthead, with not much more at their disposal than Harriet-the-Spy in terms of fruitful resources. But for one scene showing Paul suffering the ill effects of post-war syndrome during a gripping nightmare, Wenders shows him to be something of a lunatic rube--a virtual laughing stock. Indeed, most of the movie's laughs come at Paul's expense because just about every action he undertakes furthers one's opinion of him as a maligned, pathetic xenophobe. (No doubt, if this movie finds a US distributor, most patriotic Vietnam vets will express their outrage at being presented as loose cannon extremists.) Wenders' presentation of Paul clearly displays his loathing for such Reds: the pro-war, high-angst, flag-waving, Dubbya-backing, kill'-em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em out folk who tote, and vote for, the conservative line.It's a credit to John Diehl that his intense, career-defining portrayal of Paul embellishes the shallow character created by Wenders. Diehl never allows Paul to breakdown completely, despite the various defeats he suffers, and has suffered. You want to like him for to see him overcome his burdens. He's troubled but not entirely lacking heart.As for Michelle Williams, she is god-awful as Lana. Wenders wrote the part for her, but one wonders if he did so just so that he could see her face on the big screen. With her bobbed black hair and perpetual doe-in-the-headlights countenance, she brings to mind a fifth-rate imitation of Audrey Tattou ("Amelie") and the poor man's Gweneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johannson ("Lost in Translation"). For the most part, she functions as eye candy. At other times she's a distraction. And, in one embarrassing scene--a testament to Wenders' music video work furthering my belief that he had other things in mind when he wrote the part for her--where Lana is seen in isolation wearing headphones while bopping to a tune emanating from her MP3, you beg for someone to push her off the mission's rooftop. In short, Williams fails to ACT, neither adding nuance to Lana's emotions nor any inventive idiosyncrasy to Lana's physical being. Where Diehl took what he was given and ran with it like a crazed wolverine, Williams was unable to enhance her character, instead, opting to stand around, a vapid clothes horse.Wenders' presentation of his two main characters in such unmistakable hues ends up reducing Lana and Paul to one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, relegating them to ancillary evidence supporting his messages that mental, spiritual, social and political poverty are bad, and that the USA's polemical political system, which has reduced and divided citizens into two opposing factions, sucks.The title comes from a Leonard Cohen song, "The Land of Plenty." Cohen's lyrics--And I don't really know who sent me/to raise my voice and say/May the lights in the Land of Plenty/Shine on the truth some day--influence Wenders' directional choices. He employs the song strategically throughout the film, right up to the very end where truncated lyrics: "Shine on/The Truth," float in a slate gray New York skyline above Ground Zero, as if sky-written by a passing plane.An epitaph? An invocation? A critique? A prayer?Probably, all of the above.Despite Michelle Williams' abysmal performance, the conceptual limitations inherent in the rapid creation and completion of the film and the shortcomings of Wenders' obvious one-dimensional characters and biased message, "Land of Plenty" remains a provocative film worth viewing. If for no other reason than to remind us that life ain't always pretty, even here in the land of plenty. One hopes that one U.S. distributor will have the courage to pick up the film and disseminate it nationwide. If nothing else, viewers will come away thinking about just how divisive our Red and Blue political system is and maybe, just maybe, start thinking of how to change it.