Reviews

I was on a tropical island, Ko Pha-Ngan. Everyone had tripped LSD or MDMA last night. We had lunch in a local restaurant. Then the restaurant suddenly started playing this movie. Watching a movie was the last thing on my mind and I think the same goes for everyone else present there. But "Dinner for Schmucks" spelled us all.

Every scene was beautifully tied to the whole. The trickster character, tribal-artist and businessmen were all subjects which had seemed important at yesterdays party.

Yes, this movie is easy-watching and not prestigious at all but it has a beautiful message - message of love. I would recommend this film.

There were some good scenes but overall I think this movie could be entitled the years most successful failure.

I can actually see Nicolas Winding Refn (who has also directed "Bronson", which was great) sitting in the editing room with the editor and thinking: "God damn, how was I so blind, how could I not see the flaws in the script, how could I make such simple mistakes. Naah, okay gotta make something out of it. Lets put a lot of cool music!"

What disturbed me the most: *The Drivers character was dull and lifeless. Even stoic people are real people, but in the movie, I just saw a sketch. *In some places, the music was a bit off or too dominative *I didn't see any real feelings between the Driver and Irene. Romance was made only with romantic music and the implication that usually people in that sort of situation develop a romance. But it wasn't in the actors eyes. *The movie didn't have a culmination. Don't get me wrong, I hate the Hollywood Aristotle 3-act model, but a story's got to have a peak. "The Driver" just started rolling, and rolled smoothly till the end. If the culmination was meant to be an inner one, it wasn't played out properly.

It seemed Refn was repeating himself and relied too much on the old tricks - stylishness, brutality and cool music.

For me, a mediocre movie - 6.5/10

I saw this film 8 hours ago on a big screen and I'm still spelled.

The camera work was very precise and poetic just as the structure of the story line and acting. This movie is very slow, yet very intense. Every scene generates so much thought in the viewer and leaves room for imagination, so that after the first few scenes my mind was swinging in the shamanic rhythm of the movie. I actually saw some older people lightly dandling themselves in that rhythm.

It's much more than just a story of a nation that is disappearing. It is a story of all the human culture and the mortality of it. The mortality of our beloved paradigms. Yet this film looked at life from the brighter side. Everything disappears, but so what? Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.