As the story flows, we meet Nick, his lower income buddy Pete, and the slacker/thief Annie Newton. These characters form the primary troika that move the story along. As that story goes, Annie robs a jewelry store while her mechanic boyfriend steals a car. Being a little upset that she didn't listen to him, he calls the cops on her and she is arrested. Annie thinks Pete was the guy who told, he says it was Nick, and Nick is beaten and left for dead. Nick, now in limbo land, has to figure out he is a limbo citizen and then find himself before he really does die.
Now, first off, with friends like Pete, who needs enemies? Annie is given a little humanization through her rough home life where she acts as guardian to her little brother from their rather rotten parents. Sounds like I'm describing the average episode of Boston Public. Again, why am I supposed to care about these characters?
As I was leaving the theater I stopped to talk to a friend who works at the box office; he told me that a few people came out and told him that it was a good movie but you had to pay attention in order to "get it." Huh? Were we watching the same movie? This was not hard to get at all — the hard part was trying to like it. Besides the unlikable characters, the script went through some gymnastics to get everyone into place and fails to explain, or give adequate surrounding information, why some things happen. I am mainly speaking of the climactic scene involving Annie and Nick; it seems to change the rules, or at least skip a few steps along the way.
As poor as the story is, as hurry up and wait as Mick Davis and Christine Roum's script is, Goyer makes a valiant effort at making it at least visually interesting. Now Goyer is still a rather inexperienced director, and while he does show potential, his writing still leads his directing ability by a wide margin. I would have liked to have seen what his script may have been like, proving his worth, to me, with work on films such as Dark City, Blade, and Batman Begins.
Article comments
1 - brandon
i have a question, im pretty sure i paid attention for the whole film, where was the old man from the trailer, who can see him.
2 - Chris Beaumont
He was only in the trailer, as was the line "Can I say something? It was my poem!" from t he classroom scene.
Often times scenes are shot just for the trailer, or were made prior to the finalizing of the final cut of the movie.
3 - rage
what is the music in the trailer? Its kinda technoish i guess?
4 - Sdlong
The old man from the trailer is in the dvd deleted scenes and he tells Nick that they're in a limbo invisible world now and no one can see them.
5 - Sandra from Sweden
I saw it yesterday and I've seen the original one.
All I can say is; so damn Hollywood!
They totally destroyed the ending when they did the bad person dies and the good one lives.
In the original swedish one, Nick tells Annie to unplug the machine so he dies and then the cop comes and get Annie.
And Nick's friend hangs himself in the original, which seems a bit better to me, than dress up in a suit and overdose like in this one.