The End of Violence. Define it. Well, I'll try... Ciby 2000. The late 1990's. Irony. Satire. Subplotting. I could go on, but I won't.
The casting scared me at first, Pullman, Byrne, MacDowell. Not exactly a dream team for me. More like the other way around. But, they work surprisingly good portraying these characters.
The story is complex. And the subplots are many. And most of them both unusual and interesting. The dialogue is smart and often very funny, but not in the punchline-laugh-here kind of way. More like the punchline-by-the-way-smile kind of way.
The End of Violence is not at all as pretentious as its title. De facto, compared to Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin it is down to earth. But neither is it near the masterwork of Paris, Texas. But The End of Violence is better than its reputation. And the overall casting is very successful. Particularly I think Loren Dean and Traci Lind stand out. They both deliver some great ironic lines and the super cool Lind acts in a film in the film (where the director is played by Udo Kier) in which The End of Violence makes fun of itself in general and Hollywood and the whole American movie industry in particular.
The End of Violence works better as a satirical film than a big-brother-is-watching-us and the-government-is-after-us film. They just seem to can't get those right, can they? But there are too many already, that is even if you don't count The X Files.
The casting scared me at first, Pullman, Byrne, MacDowell. Not exactly a dream team for me. More like the other way around. But, they work surprisingly good portraying these characters.
The story is complex. And the subplots are many. And most of them both unusual and interesting. The dialogue is smart and often very funny, but not in the punchline-laugh-here kind of way. More like the punchline-by-the-way-smile kind of way.
The End of Violence is not at all as pretentious as its title. De facto, compared to Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin it is down to earth. But neither is it near the masterwork of Paris, Texas. But The End of Violence is better than its reputation. And the overall casting is very successful. Particularly I think Loren Dean and Traci Lind stand out. They both deliver some great ironic lines and the super cool Lind acts in a film in the film (where the director is played by Udo Kier) in which The End of Violence makes fun of itself in general and Hollywood and the whole American movie industry in particular.
The End of Violence works better as a satirical film than a big-brother-is-watching-us and the-government-is-after-us film. They just seem to can't get those right, can they? But there are too many already, that is even if you don't count The X Files.