Up

Year: 2009
Running time: 96 minutes
Certificate: U
Language: English
Screenplay: Bob Peterson, Pete Docter
Director: Pete Docter
Starring (voices): Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer

Carl and Russell travel to South America in style.

Up opens with ten quietly heartbreaking minutes which left me emotionally devastated on first viewing. Impressionable and enthusiastic youths Carl Fredricksen (Jeremy Leary) and Ellie (Elie Docter) meet and bond over their mutual love of adventure. Growing up together, they find themselves unable to realise their most precious dream of starting a family (although you have to question why they decorated a nursery before finding this out). Ultimately they grow old together and finally the surviving Carl (Ed Asner) struggles on in a lonely existence seemingly bereft of all meaning. The largely dialogue free sequence genuinely has the power to leave you a weeping wreck. The rest of the film, while wonderful, never quite manages to match this perfect opening.

Carl is an old man living this lonely existence when the main plot begins; we find him struggling to prevent developers re-homing him in order to demolish his house and build whatever it is they intend to build. It is true this seems rather clichéd, as is the introduction of our second main character, the young boy-scout Russell (Jordan Nagai) who is clearly going to show the old man there is life after loss. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Pixar, however. On the morning he’s about to be moved to the retirement home to wait for death, he reveals how he has tied a huge wad of balloons to his house and uses them to drag him and his house away to pastures new. Outlandish, clearly, but the scene is beautifully handled and a joy to watch. Unfortunately, he has taken Russell along for the ride by mistake. The two of them go off on an adventure to place the house on the top of Paradise Falls in South America.

The relationship between the two leads is a slightly unconventional take on the well-established buddy formula (something Pixar is certainly an expert on, having used the idea in different ways in Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars and Ratatouille), and has plenty of room for comedic and emotional elements – when Russell talks about his absent dad in quietly subdued tones, it is almost as upsetting as the opening. There are a few offbeat but engaging and funny plot developments as the pair meet a huge bird who the kid names ‘Kevin’ without realising it is female, and a dog named Dug (Bob Peterson) with an electronic collar which allows him to talk.

Dug introduces himself.

The choice of lead character is inspired brilliance (par for the course for Pixar), because following a man whose life, for all intents and purposes, appears to be over learning how to care for things other than the memory of his dead wife manages to temper the very silly plot points (dogs that fly planes?) with an emotional anchor that allows you to care.

The villain is slightly weak for a Pixar film, but it doesn’t even come close to spoiling the movie, and, thanks to the trademark glorious animation, the moment when the deranged ex-adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) falls to his death from his blimp gives you a queasy moment of vertigo.

Yet another superb addition to Pixar’s CV, Up will devastate you in the first ten minutes and spend the remaining running time lifting your spirits, leaving you smiling again.

Score: 8/10

Matt at NJ.com largely agrees, but Gunther at Madmind's review is clear evidence that not everybody is such a fan.

Battle Royale

Year: 2000
Running time: 114 minutes
Certificate: 18
Language: Japanese
Screenplay: Kenta Fukasaku
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Starring: Beat Takeshi, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Tarô Yamamoto

Shuya and Noriko face the horrifying truth.

Nothing can prepare you for the first time you see this film. It is astonishing. In a future Japan where the economy is broken and kids run riot, a new piece of legislation, the Battle Royale Act, is passed and a randomly selected class of out of control school children get transported to a remote island and are given three days to kill each other off until there is only one survivor, or they all die. Unsurprisingly controversial, it is based on an equally controversial novel by Koushun Takami. The director Kinji Fukasaku was 70 at the time of making, and sadly died three years later, apparently one day into filming (the supposedly awful, although I've not seen it) Battle Royale II: Requiem, which was eventually directed by his son Kenta Fukasaku, who wrote the scripts of both films. Fukasaku claimed he made it in order to warn children not to trust grown-ups. It certainly manages that and then some, but there is more to it than that.

There is little time for character development or back story, but seeing as we've got to get through over forty kids in the running time, most of them would be dead before the back story could get started. Instead of being violence for the sake of violence, there is a fierce intelligence behind the film, which combines elements of love, friendship, paranoia and mistrust, bravery and fear as each classmate makes a decision to either kill themselves, fight for survival or work together. Much like Lord of the Flies (as adapted by Dario Argento), you find yourself wondering what you might do if you were ever forced into such a situation. Would you be the kid who flies into a panic and attempts to kill everyone for fear of dying yourself? Would you form or join a resistance and attempt to overthrow the architects of the game? Would you allow paranoia to cripple you and murder your best friend?

A tight-knit friendship ends badly.

We come to focus on two students in particular, Shuya (Tatsuya Fujiwara) and Noriko (Aki Maeda), who attempt to work together to find some way to survive. While they try desperately to stay alive, classmates all around them die in horrific, twisted, shocking and sometimes uncomfortably funny ways. The only character to really get any kind of back story is teacher Kitano (played to wearied perfection by Beat Takeshi), and as we come to learn a little about his home life and his feelings for a particular student he becomes more than a one-dimensional bad guy, more than simply an unfeeling child murderer. He's more like a lonely man who has lost his faith in the system he works for. And a child murderer.

As we rattle towards the climax and the body count rises the viewer soon finds that they cannot tear their eyes from the screen, continuing to stare in disbelief and beginning to route for their favourite student. Spellbinding.

Score: 8/10

There is a lot of love out there for Battle Royale, including these reviews by Chris at Sound on Sight and on Shade.ca's website.

Scrooged

Year: 1988
Running time: 101 minutes
Certificate: PG
Language: English
Screenplay: Mitch Glazer, Michael O'Donoghue
Director: Richard Donner
Starring: Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, John Glover, Robert Mitchum, Alfre Woodard, Bobcat Goldthwait, David Johansen, Carol Kane

His terrible dandruff problem had ruined another outfit.

Bill Murray brings his own unique style of comic brilliance to Dickens' age-old story of changing your ways before it’s too late, A Christmas Carol. What results is a cracking film about Murray’s mean TV producer Frank Cross, who gets to relive his life and see how his future will turn out if he doesn’t start being nicer to people. There are more ‘classic’ versions of the story available, but for a comedy take this is up there with The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Murray's Cross is one of the most greed-driven highly-pressured misers ever dreamed up and he is a huge amount of fun to watch. Setting a classic tale in a modern-day setting is not exactly an original idea, but it is rarely executed this well. Written by Michael O'Donoghue, who, other than Scrooged, is mainly credited with work on live comedy show Saturday Night Live, and his insight into the inner workings of live television allow for some authenticity to be sprinkled through the movie, as Frank struggles to produce a live retelling of Dickens' novel.

To save his future, Frank Cross has to relive his past.

There are more great spins on things, the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present (David Johansen and Carol Kane) being prime examples, the former a loudmouth time-travelling cabbie, the latter a sweet little fairy with a penchant for violence. The beating heart beneath the cynical comedy is the sweet relationship that develops between Cross and Karen Allen's Claire, and as with any version of A Christmas Carol, it is the palpable sense of helpless regret as Scrooge, or, in this case, Frank, is forced to watch past mistakes while unable to change them that strikes the biggest emotional chord.

As with any version of A Christmas Carol, you know the ending before it starts, and Murray, unfortunately, cannot quite pull off the complete and utter change of heart entirely convincingly - he's much more fun when he's trying to staple antlers onto mice. Even so, it is still a lot of fun and worth re-watching every year.

Score: 7/10

Scrooged is well-liked out there, as you can see by having a look at these reviews by Gary at the Movie Gazette and Phil at Collider.

Elf

Year: 2003
Running time: 97 minutes
Certificate: PG
Language: English
Screenplay: David Berenbaum
Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Bob Newhart, Ed Asner, Mary Steenburgen, Peter Dinklage


Every meal tastes better with sweets.

Most of people's favourite Christmas movies were made a number of years ago – when they were kids. These films, such as Scrooge, It's A Wonderful Life, the animated Snowman and the god-awful Santa Claus: The Movie, remain our favourites because of the nostalgia attached to them, and any Christmas film that comes along nowadays is (usually correctly) considered to be inferior. While it is unlikely to fully buck this trend in the general consciousness, Elf does feel more like one of our childhood favourites, despite being fairly recent.

Will Ferrell exudes a likable innocence as Buddy, the elf that is literally too big for his boots. When his size prevents him from fitting in any longer at the North Pole, his adoptive father Papa Elf (Bob Newhart) reluctantly confirms that Buddy is human. The scene is set for a trip to the real world, particularly New York, to find his human father (James Caan), who (shock horror) is on the naughty list. There follows a not entirely original tale of the outsider struggling to fit it while making some friends and changing some lives along the way. The lack of originality is more than made up for by the well executed and perfectly timed series of jokes and set pieces, as well as a cast on fine form. Ferrell handles the lead role well, and a character that could have been frustrating is a cheerfully manic delight. The support cast are equal to Ferrell's performance - Hollywood great James Caan is clearly having a whale of a time playing the grump who learns the true meaning of Christmas (registered trademark of Moviecheese Industries, Inc.), and Peter Dinklage steals a stand out scene as a hot shot writer furious with Buddy's wide-eyed innocence as he's mistaken for an elf.

Most of the time Elf is pretty good, but when the criminally under-used Zooey Deschanel is onscreen as Jovie, Buddy's cynical love interest, it comes alive. The decision to focus on the relationship between Buddy and his father at the expense of time spent with Jovie is a misstep which costs the film the chance to be a fully fledged Christmas classic. Deschanel makes the prospect of seeing anything more interesting, and along with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Nathan Fillion is a paid up member of the 27%er club.

Jovie: One sassy, cynical elf.

The climax is, as you might expect, a very happy ending; when Santa's sleigh crashes in Buddy's new neighbourhood, the man-elf saves the day along with Jovie, who leads a mass singalong to increase belief in Santa Claus to help power his sleigh. It is complete cheese, but what did you expect from a Christmas movie?

Elf may feel like one of our beloved children's classics because there are clear similarities with Big (surely a favourite of everyone’s inner child) – a fully grown adult steadfastly refusing to act his age, and in so doing proving that the joyful innocence of a child’s point of view may be the very thing the cynical adult soul needs – sickeningly sweet, but feel good all the same.

Score: 7/10

Critically, Elf seems to have done rather well, as evidenced by this positive review by Kate at The Guardian and it even pleasantly surprised Mr. "Your Movie Sucks" Ebert.

The Terminator

Year: 1984 (Terminator), 1991 (T2), 2003 (Terminator 3), 2009 (Salvation)
Running time: 107 minutes (Terminator), 137 minutes (T2), 109 minutes (Terminator 3), 115 minutes (Salvation)
Certificate: 15 (Terminator), (T2), 12 (Terminator 3), (Salvation)
Language: English
Screenplay: James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd (Terminator), James Cameron, William Wisher Jr. (T2), John Brancato, Michael Ferris (Terminator 3), (Salvation)
Director: James Cameron (Terminator), (T2), Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3), McG (Salvation)
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Earl Boen, Dick Miller, Bill Paxton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken, Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood, Helena Bonham Carter, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard


"Absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

It’s a tough decision choosing a favourite between James Cameron’s early high water marks. I still switch between Aliens and Terminator & T2 depending on mood. It’s possible the Terminator films win out as unlike Aliens, which is a sequel set in an already somewhat established universe, they were conceived and developed by Cameron from the early stages of their inception. In a future war between killer machines and a remnant of the human race, John Connor is the human who is key to mankind's eventual victory. In an attempt to put an end to Connor, Skynet (the name of the sentient neural net-based artificial intelligence system running the machines) sends a terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back through time to kill Connor's mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to him. The human resistance succeeds in sending a protector for Sarah in Kyle Reece (Michael Biehn).

The plot of The Terminator is complex yet simple; all of the time-travelling brain-bending shenanigans are stripped down to a simple race between the machine and the human. The cast are convincing enough, with surprisingly the big man himself coming out on top – possibly something to do with playing a character that’s completely unemotional, therefore not being required to emote. Having said that, Biehn has the best line, Reece's monologue ending with “...will not stop, ever, until you are dead” trumping “I’ll be back” and sending a genuine shiver down your spine, as both the viewer and Connor are confronted with the magnitude of her situation and the true nature of her hunter. Unfortunately Cameron favourite Bill Paxton takes an early bath in this one, and every film is poorer for losing Bill Paxton.

Cameron has a much lower budget to work with than he would become used to, but makes every cent count ensuring the film looks great, although it is getting on a bit now so the effects aren’t quite as dazzling. Having said that, seeing Arnie cutting himself up to perform maintenance on his arm and eye was an astonishing thing to see and even now has a certain charm. The same cannot be said for Connor's dreadful 80s hair.


Sarah Connor: on a mission to terminate Miles Dyson.

Every beat is masterfully filmed, from the murder of Sarah's friends and the tense nightclub shootout filled with great uses of slow motion, to the iconic slaughter set in a police station, with the big man blowing cops apart left, right and centre while cutting an image that burned itself indelibly into cinema history. Although with Cameron, remarkably-filmed action is pretty much a given. Considering that this climaxes with a truck chase and the killing machine chasing our heroine through a hydraulic press despite already being blown apart, it’s truly saying something that next to the sequel the first film feels a little low key.

T2: Judgement Day pushed the boundaries of filming action beyond any previously imagined limits. Even by today’s standards, it is utterly breathless, and as mental as Connor has become. After failing in the Sarah Connor assassination attempt, Skynet tries again, sending a new and improved T-1000 terminator (Robert Patrick) to take out a teenage John Connor (Edward Furlong). It has a lighter tone, evidenced by Arnie’s comedic arrival, but the dramatic beats are still hard hitting; Sarah’s molestation at the hands of a perverted orderly and the vision of a playground full of children exposed to a nuclear blast among the most stay-with-you disturbing. It is packed full of fabulously choreographed insanity – pick almost any scene – Sarah coming face to face with a terminator again takes your breath away, the ridiculous truck chase with a motorcycle-riding Arnie reloading his shotgun one handed, the attempted assassination of Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), the fact that the T-1000 is liquid frickin’ metal, the helicopter chase, the explosion at Cyberdyne Systems seemingly big enough to blow up the world, it just keeps coming. As before, the cast are fine, but the standout here is Linda Hamilton; militant, hard as nails, and batshit insane. She is a one-woman force of nature, with the potential to be as iconic as Ripley ever was. The terminator being tamed by the young John Connor worked okay mostly, but the ending goes too far – “I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do” and the thumbs up are cringe-
worthy, but considering the sheer tour de force that has preceded it, you find yourself easily forgiving Cameron.

The most impressive new feature of the T-X: doing stunts
in those heels.

Like all great and successful movie franchises, they always make too many. Terminator 3 is unnecessary, underwhelming and a bit of a shame. The ‘sending a killer and a protector back through time’ is a plot device stretched too thin, and the action, while fine taken on its own merits (the truck chase (hey, a theme!) being a stand out), is limp beside the phenomenal T2. John Connor is in his 20s (Nick Stahl) and has to stop judgement day being triggered by another new terminator. Kristanna Loken as the T-X, able to control other machines is nowhere near as effective as Schwarzenegger's original killer or Patrick's T-1000, and you'll always watch it wondering why you’re not watching one of the first two. Still, it does score points for the surprisingly downbeat ending – I’m pretty sure this was the first time a big summer action tent-pole blockbuster ended with the nuclear annihilation of the world - a bold and brave move. It’s just a shame the movie that comes before is a bit, well, dull.

John Connor doesn't have much to smile about.

And years later, like a once-heavyweight champion coming back for one more shot at the title, the series is back with Terminator Salvation. Written by the same guys who penned Terminator 3 and directed by the man who made the Charlie's Angels films (so you know straight away you're in for a treat). The nightmarish visions that formed some of the most memorable parts of the first two films become the setting for the fourth. Mankind is on the brink, barely held together by an ineffective resistance. Christian Bale (stay out of his eye-line) is now John Connor, a soldier of the resistance, using his mother’s recordings to help fight back any way he can. Sam Worthington is Marcus Wright, a man without a memory, at least not after the point he remembers being executed, struggling to make sense of anything. A young Kyle Reece (Anton Yelchin) is struggling to survive, listening in awe to Connor’s radio broadcasts. Following that set up the plot is very predictable - the three of them go through some action beats before the mystery of Marcus is revealed (can you guess? Yawn.) and they come together to rescue a now captured Reece and give those evil machines what for.

It’s not quite as bad as all that – some of the set pieces are remarkable (the in-cockpit helicopter crash, the gas station blown up by the massive building-sized terminator), and the new machines are a nice touch, but it just doesn’t come close to the first two, and I doubt it’s anything like Cameron would have come up with had he decided to make more. He didn’t, and to be honest, they shouldn’t have either.

Score:

The Terminator: 9/10

Terminator 2: Judgement Day: 9/10

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: 5/10

Terminator Salvation: 5/10

As you might expect, the first two films are treasured in most reviews, such as this review of The Terminator written by Bill and this one of T2, by John. Parts three and four get a rather more mixed reaction - Bill at Movie Gurus in my opinion rather over-rates the third film and Peter at The Guardian is perhaps a little harsh on Salvation.

The Golden Compass

Year: 2007
Running time: 113 minutes
Certificate: PG
Language: English
Screenplay: Chris Weitz
Director: Chris Weitz
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards, Eva Green, Sam Elliott, Ian McKellen (voice), Ben Walker, Freddie Highmore (voice)


Lrya searches for truth.

High on the success of The Lord of the Rings, and bolstered by the fact that Harry Potter was fast becoming the biggest grossing movie series in history, New Line thought they were onto another fantasy adaptation winner by developing Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The most obvious sign that they slipped up big time is the fact that New Line has stopped any and all work on the sequels, both of which were green-lit before the first part had been released. This is not, as many on the Christian right would have it, because the film is a "war on Christmas" (Bill O'Reilly, as over the top and ridiculous as ever), it is because it made $85 million from a budget of about $180 million. O'Reilly seems to have neglected to notice the film has been all but stripped of any anti-religious message. After watching it for half an hour or so, you’ll be able to see why it fared so badly; it is dreadful. Dreadful. Where Potter and Rings have forged their own movie legacy, while being respectful of and retaining the essence of their source material, this simply tries to make a buck off the back of a trend.

Set in an alternative retro-futurist (if that's possible) British city where people have their souls on the outside in the form of deamons (although that is simplifying the concept horribly; deamons are more a reflection of the soul and in children represent the potential for sin), and everyone lives under the influence of the Magisterium, a religious organisation that was conceived by Pullman as an oppressive alternative Catholic Church, but here it is re-imagined more as a 1984-style Government. Children begin to disappear and when her best friend Roger (Ben Walker) goes missing Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) decides to try to find him and save him. On her journey she meets gypsies, a talking and brawling polar bear king-in-exile (an impressive CG creation voiced by Ian McKellen), witches (led by Eva Green's Serafina Pekkala) and a balloon-riding adventurer named Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott).

Mrs. Coulter: beautiful, sophisticated, evil.

To help her in her quest she has an Alethiometer, the Golden Compass of the title (although I much prefer the UK title Northern Lights), capable of revealing the truth, a precious commodity where a number of the people Lyra meets have secret agendas. The villain of the piece is Magisterium-backed Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman, who has never looked so incredible and is delightfully evil and the best thing in the film by miles), who is behind the kidnappings and heads up horrific experiments involving forcibly separating children from their deamons.

Daniel Craig plays Lord Asriel, a man on a mission to wage multi-dimensional war on the Magisterium and, in the novels, bring down god himself (beautifully imagined by Pullman as a senile useless shell, propped up entirely by the might of the powerful Magisterium). The lengths to which Lord Asriel is prepared to go to fight ensures, however, that he is no friend of Lyra's.

So what went wrong? It looks gorgeous, both in terms of scenery and characters, and the bear fight is highly impressive (although oddly bloodless, particularly when one of the fighters gets his entire lower jaw ripped off - the price you pay for a PG rating, I guess), but this is not nearly enough to succeed. It feels, for want of a better word, soulless, with the lush visuals failing to cover up a script that has no understanding of the themes of the novel, and turns events and layers and complexities into simple meetings and dull conversations, which in turn, are nothing more than excuses to get to the next meeting and conversation, pointing Lyra in the right direction. No character has a point beyond a brief conversation with Lyra. You can understand why much of the anti-religious undercurrent was removed, but it leaves some elements of the story not making sense - if the deamons don't represent the potential for sin, why is the church (Magisterium) separating them from their children, leaving the kids well-behaved lifeless husks (or dead or dying)? You can't make a story about destroying an outdated corrupt religion marketable to a country in which most people are believers in that very same religion. Everything is lost in translation.


One of countless alternate versions of one city.

It’s not like they didn’t have talent. Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Ian McKellen, Sam Elliot and Eva Green are all outstanding actors. In the lead role, newcomer Dakota Blue Richards does well; her Lyra strikes you as smart, confident and capable, but still naïve and innocent, just like Pullman's heroine should be. And it isn’t like they didn’t have the material to work with. The trilogy of books is intelligent, frightening, beautiful, heartbreaking and utterly, utterly fantastic. What it needed was a director and script that understood that and didn’t just want to make eye candy to generate revenue.

A crushing disappointment.

Score: 2/10

Owen at Entertainment Weekly thought much the same but critic royalty Roger Ebert is, on this occasion, wronger than a wrong thing.

Bobby

Year: 2006
Running time: 120 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: English
Screenplay: Emilio Estevez
Director: Emilio Estevez
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Laurence Fishburne, Freddy Rodriguez, Christian Slater, Heather Graham, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, Martin Sheen, Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood


Marry your gorgeous friend or go to Vietnam?

Emilio Estevez is not the first person that comes to mind as the ideal choice for director of a thoughtful ensemble drama with ambitions of being Altmanesque about the lives of a group of people who were witness to the assassination of presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy in 1968, but this was his passion project right from the get-go, and it was Estevez who convinced the huge array of megastars to lend their names to the project.

There is a large number of glimpses into the lives of a collection of characters at the Ambassador Hotel on the night which sees the arrival of Kennedy's entourage, and for the most part, the potentially bewildering flitting between them is handled well, allowing the viewer to keep track. Hotel manager Paul (William H. Macy) is cheating on his hairdresser wife Miriam (Sharon Stone) with switchboard operator Angela (Heather Graham). Chef Edward (Laurence Fishburne) is preaching his Kennedy-inspired philosophy to kitchen worker Jose (Freddy Rodriguez), while Daryl (Christian Slater) is being fired from the same kitchen for his poor treatment of the Mexican workers. Virginia (Demi Moore) is an alcoholic singer due to perform at the hotel who is barely being held together by her long-suffering husband Tim (Estevez). Diane (Lindsay Lohan) is marrying her friend William (Elijah Wood) so he can avoid going to fight in Vietnam. Doorman John (Anthony Hopkins) is reflecting on getting old and recalling his memories of the hotel with Nelson (Harry Belafonte). All these threads and more play out to give the film a feel of busy complexity, but Estevez does a good job of juggling each of them, although, with the inevitable time constraints, some plot threads are more effective than others.

Paul and Miriam get some perspective.

Estevez clearly holds his subject matter in high honour, and it seems a little biased, painting Kennedy as the saviour of America, when it was likely there were other sides to him not explored in the movie, but then, this never pretended to be a documentary. The film is also impressively shot, revealing another surprising side of Estevez.

The cast on the whole are as good as you’d expect them to be, with Nick Cannon (surprisingly), Demi Moore and Laurence Fishburne providing the stand out turns, while Anthony Hopkins and Elijah Wood underwhelm a little, never really causing the viewer to feel an emotional attachment. In fairness, this is more likely due to the brevity of their character arcs than the quality of their acting.

All the different threads are eventually united in shock and grief at Kennedy's murder in a climax that is handled very well, and, while perhaps being a little too American in its cheesy overbearing sentimentality, is nevertheless emotionally effecting.

Not a classic, but highly engaging and very well made.

Score: 7/10

Angie at Empire is in broad agreement, but James at Reelviews was less impressed.