A film producer who escapes death by murder and chooses to lead a simple life afterwards, a group of good Mexican gardeners, a second-rate movie actress who becomes jobless, a police officer who is not happy with the filing of his case, a Salvadoran maid whose family has been shot by death squads, a NASA employee who knows too much and his old father who doesn't want to exchange his old typewriter by a computer, a mysterious project of ending up violence in the world by putting everyone under surveillance, with all those ingredients what could a movie director have made? Surely an excellent movie. This one however is too much ambitious and produces rather poor results in comparison with that ambition. Where the contrast between dream and reality, love and greed, poetry and vulgarity could have been explored we are left with a story not bad in itself but not very deep and not especially moving.
74 Reviews
Slow, slack, but still satisfying
castipiani23 June 2001
You don't turn to Wim Wenders when you're looking for nerve-tightening suspense. Though written (by Nicholas Klein, with Wenders) in paranoid-thriller form, the script lacks even a nubbin of McGuffin to anchor the narrative. Two stories run in parallel: Bill Pullman's an action-film producer gone missing after an attempt on his life; Gabriel Byrne's a NASA computer jock on loan to a mysterious satellite surveillance project. Just as yuppie cop Loren Dean is on the point of tying the two tales together, the movie's over, the plot unresolved.
Oh, well: Los Angeles (mainly Malibu, Santa Monica, and Griffith Park) looks great (cinematography Peter Przgoda), and Wenders has an uncanny ability to get actors to feel comfortable in their skins. The most notable skin in question is Traci Lind's: her role as a stunt-woman turned aspiring actress would have made her a star in a more mainstream movie.
If you're a Wenders fan, don't let the commercial failure of this film put you off: Compared to, say, 'Far Away, So Close' it's as electrifying as 'The 39 Steps.' And somehow, as usual, Wenders's almost childlike intensity of gaze makes you look harder, too. The aroma of the film lingers, even as its substance slides through your fingers like sand.
Oh, well: Los Angeles (mainly Malibu, Santa Monica, and Griffith Park) looks great (cinematography Peter Przgoda), and Wenders has an uncanny ability to get actors to feel comfortable in their skins. The most notable skin in question is Traci Lind's: her role as a stunt-woman turned aspiring actress would have made her a star in a more mainstream movie.
If you're a Wenders fan, don't let the commercial failure of this film put you off: Compared to, say, 'Far Away, So Close' it's as electrifying as 'The 39 Steps.' And somehow, as usual, Wenders's almost childlike intensity of gaze makes you look harder, too. The aroma of the film lingers, even as its substance slides through your fingers like sand.
The beginning of boredom
=G=3 December 2002
"The End of Violence" is a clutter of stick figures wandering through a messy story about some sci-fi "big brother" government project being tested in Los Angeles. The film trades interesting characters for interesting situations, connects the dots too late revealing too little, and ends in a self absorbed coma about as flat as warm beer. Nonetheless, the film has a respectable cast, a garnish of neo-Beat poetry, a brooding noir feel, a good soundtrack, and some husky-voiced philosophical narration by Pullman making it a par watch for the needy couch potato. (C)
mmm. five is generous.
phoenix-219 September 1998
How 'bout a four? Visually, there are some great moments. I think the most interesting scenes are those where there is no dialogue but the camera follows the characters as they inwardly contemplate what this all means (Bill Pullman, Andie McDowell). Unfortunately, we as the viewers are also given (too much) time to contemplate what it means. Everything is WAY too understated. The movie slows to a stop in many places. You start to like it (the romance with Kat and the investigator, the interaction of Bill Pullman's character and the Mexican-American people) and then it doesn't follow through. The dialogue at the film school, in which the characters give a monologue for a class is probably the most interesting dialogue. Some rap, some tell a story, some recite their own poetry. That was the most moving part of the movie. While Wenders has a important point to make, it doesn't come through clearly and the viewer is left uncaring, uninterested. Maybe the only thing that could have helped the End of Violence is more good ole fashioned...violence <g>.
Heady movie forgets its brain
GradeZ12 August 1999
I don't think I've ever seen a movie that is so cerebral yet so poor at the same time. Wim Wenders is certainly revered in the film community for his offbeat ethereal productions (i.e. Wings of Desire), however, nothing profound or comprehensible can be extracted from his latest effort. It is as if four or five scripts were dropped in a studio parking lot by some clumsy intern and what was left was thrown together so that somebody wouldn't get fired. There are some common links between the characters but what does any of it have to do with the underlying plot of satellite surveillance? I kept waiting for the film to decide which plot it thought was most interesting, but it remained undecided to the very end. This was a frustrating experience to say the least.
The most aggravating aspect of this film is the fact that none of the parties involved appear to incompetent, so how is this movie so bad? Maybe I missed something...
The one saving grace of this film is the performance of Udo Kier as a German director. He alone mutters the one or two lines that managed to get me to crack a smile during this disaster.
The most aggravating aspect of this film is the fact that none of the parties involved appear to incompetent, so how is this movie so bad? Maybe I missed something...
The one saving grace of this film is the performance of Udo Kier as a German director. He alone mutters the one or two lines that managed to get me to crack a smile during this disaster.
Not Great, But Still Worth Your Time.
Movie-ManDan28 June 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Wim Wenders' flop of a movie during the late 90's deserved a bigger audience than it got. In fact, the only reason why I even heard about it was from the praise that Gene Siskel gave it. I still think the late Chicago critic overdid it with his praise, I still see a nice picture here. Is it worth a perfect ten stars? No, I just hope it raises the 5.6 rating it currently has.
To really get this, pay close attention to the dialogue, infer, and beyond that simply watch it more than once.
We are first introduced to Hollywood producer, Mike Max (Bill Pullman). He explains that as a kid movies scared him, so he grew up to make them. I love storylines about movies so I really bought into Mike Max's story. He is so consumed with the business that he barely notices his wife (Andie MacDowell) is about to leave him. (This threads out into her trying to take over his company.) Ironically, both still care deeply for each other. When Mike gets kidnapped by two hitmen, he narrowly escapes while they get sniped. He goes into hiding at his Spanish neighbours' house while still trying to find out who is after him. This is the cheesiest part of the picture with Max having a change of heart with his life. It is basically a "going native" subplot.
Secondly, we meet former NASA member Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) who now runs a top-secret high-tech surveillance system overlooking all of Los Angeles. I love movies about surveillance like 'The Conversation' so I really got hooked with this storyline too. Although he looks at the entire city, he also his some people above him that say what goes. When Mike is about to get killed, the camera on him manually fuzzes out. Unsure about the purpose of it all, Ray emails Mike a file detailing the system as means of getting an outsider's point of view. His life is in danger too.
The most wasted story involves a detective named Brock who looks into Max's disappearance and strikes up a relationship with the star of Max's new film, Cat, who has also been keeping in contact with Max. For a plot about digging into a disappearance, I was sure bored. This is the biggest downfall of the movie.
Each of these stories intersect in fascinating ways. I have heard people say this movie is confusing, but Wenders just chose to let the audience infer. It is never explicitly said who ordered Mike's kidnapping, but throughout the film, we take a safe guess. Despite all the stories coming together, it seems like it all happens in such tiresome ways. There is after all lot in this film going on.
The movie also provides great commentary on violence. Mike thrives on violence, but soon has a change of heart. And the surveillance team that Bering works for tries to put an end to violence in the city, kind of like in 'Minority Report'. Lastly, Wenders decided to put the title to use: there is barely any violence shown. For instance, a bar brawl lasts maybe two seconds at the most. And the quality of camera that shows Max's kidnappers being killed is much to poor for it to be anything explicit.
If the rating for this was higher, I would have given this an eight out of ten. It tries to be a huge deal but does not amount to anything massive. It does not have the shocks of 'The Conversation', the philosophy of 'Minority Report' or the smooth swiftness of another major LA picture, 'Short Cuts'. I do not mind what Wenders presents to us in 'The End of Violence', I very much like it. It simply falls short of greatness.
3/4
To really get this, pay close attention to the dialogue, infer, and beyond that simply watch it more than once.
We are first introduced to Hollywood producer, Mike Max (Bill Pullman). He explains that as a kid movies scared him, so he grew up to make them. I love storylines about movies so I really bought into Mike Max's story. He is so consumed with the business that he barely notices his wife (Andie MacDowell) is about to leave him. (This threads out into her trying to take over his company.) Ironically, both still care deeply for each other. When Mike gets kidnapped by two hitmen, he narrowly escapes while they get sniped. He goes into hiding at his Spanish neighbours' house while still trying to find out who is after him. This is the cheesiest part of the picture with Max having a change of heart with his life. It is basically a "going native" subplot.
Secondly, we meet former NASA member Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) who now runs a top-secret high-tech surveillance system overlooking all of Los Angeles. I love movies about surveillance like 'The Conversation' so I really got hooked with this storyline too. Although he looks at the entire city, he also his some people above him that say what goes. When Mike is about to get killed, the camera on him manually fuzzes out. Unsure about the purpose of it all, Ray emails Mike a file detailing the system as means of getting an outsider's point of view. His life is in danger too.
The most wasted story involves a detective named Brock who looks into Max's disappearance and strikes up a relationship with the star of Max's new film, Cat, who has also been keeping in contact with Max. For a plot about digging into a disappearance, I was sure bored. This is the biggest downfall of the movie.
Each of these stories intersect in fascinating ways. I have heard people say this movie is confusing, but Wenders just chose to let the audience infer. It is never explicitly said who ordered Mike's kidnapping, but throughout the film, we take a safe guess. Despite all the stories coming together, it seems like it all happens in such tiresome ways. There is after all lot in this film going on.
The movie also provides great commentary on violence. Mike thrives on violence, but soon has a change of heart. And the surveillance team that Bering works for tries to put an end to violence in the city, kind of like in 'Minority Report'. Lastly, Wenders decided to put the title to use: there is barely any violence shown. For instance, a bar brawl lasts maybe two seconds at the most. And the quality of camera that shows Max's kidnappers being killed is much to poor for it to be anything explicit.
If the rating for this was higher, I would have given this an eight out of ten. It tries to be a huge deal but does not amount to anything massive. It does not have the shocks of 'The Conversation', the philosophy of 'Minority Report' or the smooth swiftness of another major LA picture, 'Short Cuts'. I do not mind what Wenders presents to us in 'The End of Violence', I very much like it. It simply falls short of greatness.
3/4
Violence would be preferable to this
rparham6 March 2006
Wim Wender's The End of Violence is a rather disjointed and uninvolving piece of film-making. It wants to be a tale about how violence affects our lives and how, once exposed to it, we find ourselves fundamentally changed. It might actually succeed if it wasn't busy confusing the audience and boring them to death at the same time.
As the film opens, we are treated to a day in the life of Hollywood producer Mike Max (Bill Pullman), who is busy wheeling and dealing through multiple phones and computer connections, all the while ignoring his wife, Paige (Andie McDowell). While he is out during the day, he is kidnapped by two not quite bright hit men who are killed in a mysterious fashion and Mike Max manages to escape. He is found dazed by some Latino gardeners and Mike decides that he needs to hide from his old life to protect himself while discovering that violence, which he has peddled in action movies, is a bad thing. Meanwhile, Paige has taken over her husbands company in his absence and developed a relationship with a recording artist named Six (K. Todd Freeman) who provides the love she was lacking in her relationship with Mike. Also meanwhile, technical whiz Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) is busy putting the finishing touches on a high-tech surveillance system that the government hopes to use to bring violence in the city under control. However, Ray begins to suspect that the system is possibly being used for nefarious purposes and is trying to get someone to listen to him. And yet elsewhere still, stuntwoman turned actress Cat (Traci Lind) is getting her big acting break in Mike's latest film, and she finds herself somewhat smitten with detective Dean Brock (Loren Dean) who is investigating the disappearance of Mike.
As you can probably tell from the above paragraph, The End of Violence has a lot going on. The problem is that little of it is compelling and because the film is busy juggling so many plot threads at the same time, several of them seem like afterthoughts. The subplot featuring Paige's involvement with Six, for instance, has absolutely no emotional resonance for the audience because we barely know these people. The film also takes a lot of side trips to inexplicable scenes where people gather at performance art sessions to get some bigger message across, I guess, but they just end up being pointless and drawing the film out even more.
Wenders manages to suck the life out of most of the scenes in the film. The acting is uniformly wooden and unconvincing, the characters are little more than bodies going through the motions, and the plot is half-explained and developed. Take the plot thread of Ray trying to discover the truth about the surveillance system. It is revealed eventually that he has actually already been in contact with Mike about it with the hopes of revealing the system to the public, but the film has so many pieces moving around that it takes forever to make the connection between those two characters.
The film also features dreaded voice-over monologues that are just silly and pretentious. The anti-violence message, what there is of it, is also heavy-handed, to say the least. In one scene, Six speaks to Mike on the phone and gives us a long explanation about why violence is good and people revel in it. You can practically see Wenders on his soapbox while this scene is going on.
I suppose this movie is supposed to be a thriller to some degree, but there is little that is thrilling about The End of Violence. It is a monotonous bore of a film that comes to a rather abrupt ending without really dealing with all of the issues it seems to want to explore. Instead of an end of violence, I'll take an end to this particular mess.
As the film opens, we are treated to a day in the life of Hollywood producer Mike Max (Bill Pullman), who is busy wheeling and dealing through multiple phones and computer connections, all the while ignoring his wife, Paige (Andie McDowell). While he is out during the day, he is kidnapped by two not quite bright hit men who are killed in a mysterious fashion and Mike Max manages to escape. He is found dazed by some Latino gardeners and Mike decides that he needs to hide from his old life to protect himself while discovering that violence, which he has peddled in action movies, is a bad thing. Meanwhile, Paige has taken over her husbands company in his absence and developed a relationship with a recording artist named Six (K. Todd Freeman) who provides the love she was lacking in her relationship with Mike. Also meanwhile, technical whiz Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) is busy putting the finishing touches on a high-tech surveillance system that the government hopes to use to bring violence in the city under control. However, Ray begins to suspect that the system is possibly being used for nefarious purposes and is trying to get someone to listen to him. And yet elsewhere still, stuntwoman turned actress Cat (Traci Lind) is getting her big acting break in Mike's latest film, and she finds herself somewhat smitten with detective Dean Brock (Loren Dean) who is investigating the disappearance of Mike.
As you can probably tell from the above paragraph, The End of Violence has a lot going on. The problem is that little of it is compelling and because the film is busy juggling so many plot threads at the same time, several of them seem like afterthoughts. The subplot featuring Paige's involvement with Six, for instance, has absolutely no emotional resonance for the audience because we barely know these people. The film also takes a lot of side trips to inexplicable scenes where people gather at performance art sessions to get some bigger message across, I guess, but they just end up being pointless and drawing the film out even more.
Wenders manages to suck the life out of most of the scenes in the film. The acting is uniformly wooden and unconvincing, the characters are little more than bodies going through the motions, and the plot is half-explained and developed. Take the plot thread of Ray trying to discover the truth about the surveillance system. It is revealed eventually that he has actually already been in contact with Mike about it with the hopes of revealing the system to the public, but the film has so many pieces moving around that it takes forever to make the connection between those two characters.
The film also features dreaded voice-over monologues that are just silly and pretentious. The anti-violence message, what there is of it, is also heavy-handed, to say the least. In one scene, Six speaks to Mike on the phone and gives us a long explanation about why violence is good and people revel in it. You can practically see Wenders on his soapbox while this scene is going on.
I suppose this movie is supposed to be a thriller to some degree, but there is little that is thrilling about The End of Violence. It is a monotonous bore of a film that comes to a rather abrupt ending without really dealing with all of the issues it seems to want to explore. Instead of an end of violence, I'll take an end to this particular mess.
Scenes in search of a story
tomsview11 May 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Wim Wender's film meanders through a number of loosely connected sequences with the actors seemingly deprived of sleep for days before the shoot in order to deliver performances that are the epitome of low key.
Different strands of the story are slowly introduced: Mike Max (Bill Pullman), a Hollywood producer who makes gory action thrillers; Cat (Traci Lind), a stunt woman on his films; his wife Paige (Andy McDowell) who is about to leave him.
A seemingly disparate strand involves surveillance expert Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) who uses cameras located around Los Angeles to spy on just about everything. Then there is Detective Block (Loren Dean) who is called in when Max disappears.
It all goes into the blender, but as each character is introduced, it opens up sequences that constantly pull away from the main thread of the story, which has Max inadvertently receiving a secret document. Among the distractions are scenes involving Bering's father (Sam Fuller), an acting school, and the making of one of Max's films featuring a recreation of the café in Edward Hopper's painting "Nighthawks". The soundtrack by Ry Cooder and others has a detached quality bearing little relationship to the action on screen.
Maybe it looked better on paper, but old Wim is such a lover of the obscure that he often cuts away when anything exciting begins to happen. It's hard to pinpoint where you realise the film isn't working; it just slowly slides into inertia. Without giving them away, the surprises at the end seem like a frantic attempt to breathe life into a body that we have already pronounced dead.
The film feels a little like "Mulholland Dr.", but of course it was made a few years before Lynch's film. Along with the obscurification, it's probably the setting, the unusual hit men, the association with filmmaking and the acting auditions that does it.
If the point of the story was how in the attempt to end violence, surveillance methods and powerful government bodies end up creating more, then it's a ponderous message.
The film was in that run of movies that featured interweaving stories that collide at the end; "Magnolia" and "Crash", as well as Altman's brilliant "Short Cuts". However it's a complex format that doesn't really attract me to watching them again. That goes double for "The End of Violence".
Different strands of the story are slowly introduced: Mike Max (Bill Pullman), a Hollywood producer who makes gory action thrillers; Cat (Traci Lind), a stunt woman on his films; his wife Paige (Andy McDowell) who is about to leave him.
A seemingly disparate strand involves surveillance expert Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) who uses cameras located around Los Angeles to spy on just about everything. Then there is Detective Block (Loren Dean) who is called in when Max disappears.
It all goes into the blender, but as each character is introduced, it opens up sequences that constantly pull away from the main thread of the story, which has Max inadvertently receiving a secret document. Among the distractions are scenes involving Bering's father (Sam Fuller), an acting school, and the making of one of Max's films featuring a recreation of the café in Edward Hopper's painting "Nighthawks". The soundtrack by Ry Cooder and others has a detached quality bearing little relationship to the action on screen.
Maybe it looked better on paper, but old Wim is such a lover of the obscure that he often cuts away when anything exciting begins to happen. It's hard to pinpoint where you realise the film isn't working; it just slowly slides into inertia. Without giving them away, the surprises at the end seem like a frantic attempt to breathe life into a body that we have already pronounced dead.
The film feels a little like "Mulholland Dr.", but of course it was made a few years before Lynch's film. Along with the obscurification, it's probably the setting, the unusual hit men, the association with filmmaking and the acting auditions that does it.
If the point of the story was how in the attempt to end violence, surveillance methods and powerful government bodies end up creating more, then it's a ponderous message.
The film was in that run of movies that featured interweaving stories that collide at the end; "Magnolia" and "Crash", as well as Altman's brilliant "Short Cuts". However it's a complex format that doesn't really attract me to watching them again. That goes double for "The End of Violence".
A game for pseudo-intellectuals - and it's terrible!
MOscarbradley9 June 2007
A movie about the business of making movies in all its vacuity and of recording things on camera. This is Wim Wenders' "Le Mepris" and his "Rear Window", (it's all about looking and not about seeing), and it's full of movie references. Sometimes they are about the only thing to distract you from all the ennui and the lack of anything remotely interesting happening up on the screen. In place of believable characters and a decent script or lines you might want to listen to Wenders fills his screen with images that are supposed to engage us on a movie-buff level. The film's like a game pseudo-intellectuals play; you fill in the blanks and if you can guess the better film the blanks come from, all the better, you get brownie points. In other words, this is pretty terrible, the kind of unmitigated disaster only a great director could make when he starts believing his own hype. I mean, Wenders can't lay the blame entirely on the cack-handed script; after all, he co-wrote the original story with script writer Nicholas Klein. I was going to say it goes deeper than that, (or aspires to), but deep isn't really a word you want to use when reviewing this pile of horse dung. OK, it looks terrific; what more can I say? Oh, except he talked the legendary Samuel Fuller into appearing in it and he's terrible, too.
Good Film, Good Cast, Not Sure About The Director Though
oust12345615 April 2007
This film was just shown on United Kingdom television at three o'clock in the morning and it took me totally by surprise as I had never even heard of this movie before. Its a good movie but I just wonder how much of an influence the David Lynch film "Lost Highway" had on the casting of Bill Pullman, he's a decent actor but whatever happened to his career? He seems to play these type of roles very well and its a nice surprise when Gabriel Byrne pops up on-screen. If you get the opportunity to watch this film then its definitely worth a look-in if you need to pass a few hours of time. Often the direction behind the film could be improved and their are some loose-ends which could really do with being tied up but some of the imagery and ideas are of sound mind and as thrillers go this is from a good period in the genre. As registered in the "Vote" section I could only give this film a six out of ten due to the average directing and loose-ends. If you like Lost Highway by David Lynch and also featuring Bill Pullman then "The End Of Violence" is another film you will enjoy
Random, sluggish and boring
Balfour21 October 1998
It didn't feel like it had any central thread. Nothing really grabbed my attention. There were a number of promising potentials, but they were never followed up on. Through most of the movie, I didn't know what the hell was going on, and I wondered if the whole thing was Wenders' private joke.
Many of the characters were either annoying (actors playing their pretentious selves), or just big blobs of nothing.
Pointless non-sequitur slug of a movie.
Many of the characters were either annoying (actors playing their pretentious selves), or just big blobs of nothing.
Pointless non-sequitur slug of a movie.
The State of Control
Tanikjo25 April 1999
I watched this movie a few times, and I have met very few people who liked it as much as I did. I see it as an artful expression of all the critical thoughts in philosophy, sociology etc. that show how genocide, ultra-violence and fascist methods of population-control can develop out of all the promises of order, justice and peace the the modern state makes to its citizens. Also, the dialogue has absolutely superb moments, as when Mike the fugitive of the state says to his wife confronts his ex-wife with the words "Who can I turn myself into? Well I see who you turned yourself into...". A lot of people seem to dislike the loose ends and unexplained shifts that the characters make - but I say, in that very absence of rigid structure the film makes a parallel to the manifest ambivalence of modern life as a citizen: Our greatest protector is also our greatest threat.
A definition of The End of Violence
koop-220 October 1999
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.
Missing a cohesive thread
Caguas19 September 1998
One of the most disjointed films I have seen. It almost seems like the had material here for three or four distinct movies. One was a government conspiracy style movie. The second was a traditional "cop investigates a murder and falls in love with one of the people he meets" movie. The third was how wealth and corrupt relationships and twists reality into a ball of twine.
One positive was the photography. Nice cinematic shots of cities and other scenes.
One positive was the photography. Nice cinematic shots of cities and other scenes.
It takes violence to snuff violence
prairiem26 January 2004
I'm not surprised that a child would not understand this movie. To me it was very meaningful, but only in terms of lived experience in jobs and politics. It's really "Brave New World," where authority figures keep order by putting up cameras everywhere and intervening to eliminate anyone who is disorderly or criminal. Violence is a huge preoccupation, but only tolerated as make-believe -- but the make-believe gets confused with real violence. Control, transgression, power are the pivots of the well-to-do. Ashcroft stuff.
But the Mexican and immigrant families offer a warmer, truer alternative. In the end, they are more powerful because they are free and can think. The Kinko's episode, in which the police are defeated from taking control by their own preconceptions, is a good example. As underlings, laborers, the Mexicans understand what's at stake and they are everywhere, invisible to their employers.
The intellectual technician doesn't catch on until it's too late.
I'm told that what I saw was a re-cut and that the early version was indeed chaotic with a lot of loose ends. All I can say is that now this is one of the videos I rewatch and ponder.
But the Mexican and immigrant families offer a warmer, truer alternative. In the end, they are more powerful because they are free and can think. The Kinko's episode, in which the police are defeated from taking control by their own preconceptions, is a good example. As underlings, laborers, the Mexicans understand what's at stake and they are everywhere, invisible to their employers.
The intellectual technician doesn't catch on until it's too late.
I'm told that what I saw was a re-cut and that the early version was indeed chaotic with a lot of loose ends. All I can say is that now this is one of the videos I rewatch and ponder.
This movie sucked with teeth!!!!
Hippster31 July 1998
Attn possible viewers; This is the biggest stinking pile of crap I have ever wasted my money and time on. I wish I could have that 2 + hrs of time back. I would rather watch all of the Friday the 13th movies consecutively. I cannot believe sweet little andie McDowell took a part in this peice of garbage. I believe my opinion has been expressed. People - Drill screws through your feet, it will be less painful. Disgusted and Embarassed, Mr. Hipp
Ambitious, but not terribly successful.
Hey_Sweden19 December 2018
Bill Pullman is okay as Mike Max, a veteran Hollywood producer who's made his name with a succession of violent action pictures. One night, he is carjacked by two hoodlums, only to escape and spend time hiding out with the family of his Mexican gardener. He doesn't seem THAT interested in finding out what truly happened that night; meanwhile, the film also follows Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne), a lonely man operating a high-tech surveillance project out of Griffith Park Observatory. A young detective called "Doc" (Loren Dean) tries to make sense out of the Mike Max disappearance.
The intentions of celebrated German director Wim Wenders are certainly good, as he and his screenwriter Nicholas Klein set out to examine, and ruminate over, the "psyche of Los Angeles". His desire was to paint a multi-faceted portrayal of a city beset by paranoia and violence, a city which fascinated him. Given that Wenders himself is not fond of the proliferation of violence in cinema, "The End of Violence" shows us very little. Unfortunately, this picture of his suffers from a slow pace and a sometimes meandering nature. It's really not that involving, with very few characters we can genuinely care about.
Among its assets are the widescreen photography (this was Wenders' first film shot in 2.35:1), and the excellent, flavourful soundtrack composed by guitar great Ry Cooder.
The wonderful assemblage of acting talent helps to maintain interest even when the story doesn't. Traci Lind is a standout as a lovely stuntwoman being groomed for a career in acting. Andie MacDowell is barely passable as Mike Max's neglected wife. A sombre-faced Byrne does get to share some scenes with the legendary filmmaker Sam Fuller, who plays his father. Sadly, Fuller would pass away shortly after production wrapped. Other familiar faces include Rosalind Chao, Pruitt Taylor Vince, John Diehl, Nicole Ari Parker, Daniel Benzali, Marshall Bell, Frederic Forrest, Udo Kier (a hoot, as always, as a film director), Henry Silva, Peter Horton, Michael Massee, and O-Lan Jones.
Ultimately, style triumphs over what little substance there is in this forgettable feature.
Six out of 10.
The intentions of celebrated German director Wim Wenders are certainly good, as he and his screenwriter Nicholas Klein set out to examine, and ruminate over, the "psyche of Los Angeles". His desire was to paint a multi-faceted portrayal of a city beset by paranoia and violence, a city which fascinated him. Given that Wenders himself is not fond of the proliferation of violence in cinema, "The End of Violence" shows us very little. Unfortunately, this picture of his suffers from a slow pace and a sometimes meandering nature. It's really not that involving, with very few characters we can genuinely care about.
Among its assets are the widescreen photography (this was Wenders' first film shot in 2.35:1), and the excellent, flavourful soundtrack composed by guitar great Ry Cooder.
The wonderful assemblage of acting talent helps to maintain interest even when the story doesn't. Traci Lind is a standout as a lovely stuntwoman being groomed for a career in acting. Andie MacDowell is barely passable as Mike Max's neglected wife. A sombre-faced Byrne does get to share some scenes with the legendary filmmaker Sam Fuller, who plays his father. Sadly, Fuller would pass away shortly after production wrapped. Other familiar faces include Rosalind Chao, Pruitt Taylor Vince, John Diehl, Nicole Ari Parker, Daniel Benzali, Marshall Bell, Frederic Forrest, Udo Kier (a hoot, as always, as a film director), Henry Silva, Peter Horton, Michael Massee, and O-Lan Jones.
Ultimately, style triumphs over what little substance there is in this forgettable feature.
Six out of 10.
The end of Wenders!!
emonja3 February 1999
Well, it is a poor movie, nothing happens, ever!!, but that's no reason, I mean if you saw Stranger Than Paradise (1984)of Jim Jarmusch you see a movie were nothing happens but still rules, anyway, I think Wenders sold out, he started with this movie, and later selling his "Wings of Desire" script to hollywod, very disappointing!
Are we all being watched?
helpless_dancer5 June 1999
This film went way over my head. It involved a government conspiracy of some sort in which hi-tech spy satellites were being used to lower the murder rate. I liked the picture, but understood little about what the story was all about.
Cruelly abrupt movie about a cruelly abrupt movie
BobStein-VisiBone12 October 2007
Great actors, characters and story building up to a dissatisfying oh-my-god-it-can't-be-yet ending. It's almost a cruel joke that in the movie is an aborted movie production. Am I just not deep enough to see the point? I must be so shallow that it seems like the original writer/director/producer team were all shot before the movie was done and the cleanup crew left more loose ends than a tide of Malibu seaweed. There is a beautiful little existential paradox and message. But we were so much enjoying the story and all the substories and loving the characters that to just quit on us like it did was cruel. The inbred credits led me to expect a much more coherent wrap up.
Wim Wenders is lost in Hollywood...
karLcx5 January 2002
I honestly saw no point whatsoever to this film. Unlike the vast majority of Wim Wenders' movies, this movie had no warmth in it either in the story or method of creation. I didn't identify with any of the characters, nor did I so much as like any of them. I also have to wonder why talented actors such as Udo Keir, and indeed great directors like Wenders wasted their time IN Hollywood, WITH Hollywood 'dime-a-dozen' trash actors like Andie MacDowell and Bill Pullman, when their work in the past has been featured with such fantastical eloquence and inspiring style. After being spoiled shamelessly over and over by "Der Himmel Uber Berlin" and "Paris, Texas", this film is an utterly complete disappointment. 6/10 only for Wenders and Keir! Nothing else deserves anything but a puzzled look of mild pity.
what is this about?
Truman_Burbank27 February 2001
I expected much of this movie, since I think Gabriel Byrne and Andie MacDowell are fine actors. But what a disappointment! It did not really bother me that it was a very slow movie (although I almost fell asleep sometimes), but for me, the story was a big question mark. I have seen complicated movies before, but I always understood them (Usual Suspects, Memento, Mission Impossible, ...). I would not recommend this movie to anybody, it is boring and it makes no sense!
Know what to expect, and you'll freakin LOVE this film
rooprect8 February 2010
...or as I like to think of it, THE END OF VIOLENCE is the greatest scifi crime thriller that never was.
As always with Wim Wenders, the plot is fantastic. But, as always with Wim Wenders, the movie isn't about the plot, and those who expect to be carried by the plot will be disappointed. In the same way WINGS OF DESIRE had a great plot about angels but was not a fantasy; in the same way UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD had a great plot about a high tech dream machine but was not about technology; in the same way LISBON STORY had a riveting plot about a missing person but was not a mystery, here we have the same Wendersian formula which he pulls off flawlessly.
The plot, if you're curious, is about a futuristic "God machine" that can eliminate people with the push of a button. Designed ostensibly for crime prevention & surveillance (the old "to protect & serve" - where have we heard that before?), it gets out of control and takes murder & corruption to the next level of clinical perfection. Caught up in the game is Mike Max, a movie producer struggling with his own intense xenophobia and paranoia, which, like a disease, he himself spreads to society through his films.
That's all I'll say about the plot because (a) I don't want to ruin anything, and (b) like I said, the plot is secondary. What's really important, as you watch this movie, is to pay attention to the thought-provoking dialogue, the philosophical allusions and the overall metaphor of the situation. If you can tune into that stuff, then you're set for a great experience.
I'll give you just one example of the philosophy. There's a scene early on where they talk about the "observer effect" (you might recognize it as the paradox of "Schrödinger's cat" which you can look up on wikipedia). This is the fundamental theme of the film: the idea that, even by "impartially observing", we change the situation or in some cases destroy it. As one of the characters says, it's like "flipping on the light to observe the darkness." What a poetic & appropriate analogy.
This movie is choc full of that kind of stuff, and you may miss it if you're expecting car chases and gunfire. No, instead you get the ultimate anti-violence violence film, and I gotta give Wenders a standing ovation on being the first director I've seen pull it off.
A lot of movies in the past have carried a message of anti-violence; yet the films sink to the thrill of showing violence themselves and often glorifying it (the biggest example would be Norm Jewison's classic ROLLERBALL), and this becomes confusing if not outright hypocritical. But in this case, we get a chilling depiction of the epidemic of violence without showing any blood & guts to excite our savage instincts. It remains an intellectual film, not visceral. Don't get me wrong; this movie is plenty suspenseful, and on more than one occasion it'll have your heart flopping like an electrified noodle. But it's all done by way of the mind. To me, that's what makes this depiction of violence all the more effective & frightening: the way it's so clean & neat like in a video game. And without any fuss, someone's head could just go pop.
This is the best film I've seen in a while. I'm only taking off a few points because I wished it was twice as long & had more monologues, like some of the older Wenders films. But I have to say this film sticks to its objective and delivers a perfect product.
As always with Wim Wenders, the plot is fantastic. But, as always with Wim Wenders, the movie isn't about the plot, and those who expect to be carried by the plot will be disappointed. In the same way WINGS OF DESIRE had a great plot about angels but was not a fantasy; in the same way UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD had a great plot about a high tech dream machine but was not about technology; in the same way LISBON STORY had a riveting plot about a missing person but was not a mystery, here we have the same Wendersian formula which he pulls off flawlessly.
The plot, if you're curious, is about a futuristic "God machine" that can eliminate people with the push of a button. Designed ostensibly for crime prevention & surveillance (the old "to protect & serve" - where have we heard that before?), it gets out of control and takes murder & corruption to the next level of clinical perfection. Caught up in the game is Mike Max, a movie producer struggling with his own intense xenophobia and paranoia, which, like a disease, he himself spreads to society through his films.
That's all I'll say about the plot because (a) I don't want to ruin anything, and (b) like I said, the plot is secondary. What's really important, as you watch this movie, is to pay attention to the thought-provoking dialogue, the philosophical allusions and the overall metaphor of the situation. If you can tune into that stuff, then you're set for a great experience.
I'll give you just one example of the philosophy. There's a scene early on where they talk about the "observer effect" (you might recognize it as the paradox of "Schrödinger's cat" which you can look up on wikipedia). This is the fundamental theme of the film: the idea that, even by "impartially observing", we change the situation or in some cases destroy it. As one of the characters says, it's like "flipping on the light to observe the darkness." What a poetic & appropriate analogy.
This movie is choc full of that kind of stuff, and you may miss it if you're expecting car chases and gunfire. No, instead you get the ultimate anti-violence violence film, and I gotta give Wenders a standing ovation on being the first director I've seen pull it off.
A lot of movies in the past have carried a message of anti-violence; yet the films sink to the thrill of showing violence themselves and often glorifying it (the biggest example would be Norm Jewison's classic ROLLERBALL), and this becomes confusing if not outright hypocritical. But in this case, we get a chilling depiction of the epidemic of violence without showing any blood & guts to excite our savage instincts. It remains an intellectual film, not visceral. Don't get me wrong; this movie is plenty suspenseful, and on more than one occasion it'll have your heart flopping like an electrified noodle. But it's all done by way of the mind. To me, that's what makes this depiction of violence all the more effective & frightening: the way it's so clean & neat like in a video game. And without any fuss, someone's head could just go pop.
This is the best film I've seen in a while. I'm only taking off a few points because I wished it was twice as long & had more monologues, like some of the older Wenders films. But I have to say this film sticks to its objective and delivers a perfect product.
many unanswered questions
ksf-211 February 2021
A lot going on here. Mike Max, mister big shot movie producer (Bill Pullman) is kidnapped by cut-rate thugs. and somehow manages to turn the tables, escape the kidnappers, and make a get-away. but the experience has changed him. meanwhile, we see someone is up in Griffith Observatory, watching a thousand cameras, as they watch over LA. the observer (Ray, played by Gabriel Byrne) seems to remember spotting something that might be related to the incident. lots of ethereal, extra trippy chatty conversation, as Doc (?) interviews people, searching for Mike, who is missing. he visits the wife (Andie McDowell), Mike's actors. and the whole time, Mike is hanging with the gardeners. lots of nebulous characters; no-one ever says anyone's name, so we're not really sure who anyone is. and many long pauses. it turns out there's a big-brother project to install cameras and security to help the police reduce crime, but it's so controversial that it's teetering on not being approved. sounds like Minority Report. discussions of violence in movies, violence in music lyrics. discussions on the technology to stop the violence. directed by wim wenders, who is adept at films in many categories... docs, music vids, full length. it's good, if you don't mind some confusion. mysterious mystery. keeping the viewer in the dark about so many things. it's just clever enough to get away with it. on Epix streaming channel.
The worst movie I've ever seen. I mean it.
jfvr23 October 2000
If you have ever considered renting The End of Violence, don't bother. It is, without exaggeration, the worst movie I have ever seen. From the aimless plot lines to the poor direction, this movie is definitely one to avoid. If you want to see a really bad movie, watch Plan 9 From Outer Space. At least there was a half-assed coherent plot.
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