Overrated film - lots of potential with little follow-through

kergillian

This film is very slow. Not a good, easy, mellow slowness, nor a tense, building slowness. Just plain SLOW. Salvatores is no Hitchcock, and his pacing is WAY off-key.

Not to say that this movie is bad because of pacing - or that it's bad at all - but with the raw potential that this film had, it was VERY disappointing to see the lack of follow- through.

The film had me until just after Michele finds the boy. I won't betray spoilers, but rather than focus on the characters, the tension between the characters, and the consequences, emotionally and physically, of the 'secret', the film falls flat because it falls away from the entire center of the story - the boy being hidden in the pit. Everybody has secrets in this film, but those secrets take second place to a variety of other non-issues which do nothing to further the plot.

And so, by the ending (which is a VERY potent and poignant ending), there has been so much forced on the viewer to weight the film down, that the ending doesn't even approach the level of power and intensity it could have.

This film could be brilliant if it explored the central THEMES of the story a little more, and gave us more of the story itself. Instead we are left with flashes of what could have been surrounded by mountains of what unfortunately was. 6/10.

score 6/10

kergillian 25 March 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1049299/