Intermission
Rating: **1/2 (out of ****)
A film review by Matt Noller
Intermission is a film in the vein of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction in
that it takes a group of eccentric characters, throws them into a series of
strange events, and sees how it all turns out. The clear difference between
the two films, however, is that Intermission can't even create the illusion
of being about something, which Pulp Fiction pulls off so admirably,
creating a film that is decidedly less than the sum of its parts.
It's not hard to pinpoint what is wrong with Intermission. It's director
John Crowley's debut picture, and he just isn't ready to pull off something
this ambitious. Success would require artful balancing of disparate stories
and themes until it eventually all comes together, but Crowley fumbles with
the themes until nothing that happens seems like anything other than a
screenwriter's conceit, and quite a few plot threads are ended
unsastisfactorily.
It's a shame, too, because the story shows promise. An ensemble piece,
Intermission involves John (Cillian Murphy) and Oscar (David Wilmot), two
petty thieves working in a department store. They both are having trouble in
love; John just broke up with his girlfriend, Deidre (Kelly Macdonald), and
Oscar doesn't have any love life to speak of at all. So Oscar goes to a
mature women singles club to hook up and meets Noeleen (Deirdre O'Kane), the
abandoned wife of Sam (Michael McElhatton), who is now living with Diedre.
Meanwhile John gets involved in a complex bank-robbing scheme with Lehiff
(Colin Farrell), a violent hooligan.
If that all sounds confusing, consider that I haven't even mentioned Jerry
(Colm Meaney), a sadistic cop, or Sally (Shirley Henderson), Deidre's
mustachioed sister. There are literally a dozen major characters and
plotlines, not all of which Intermission spends the necessary amount of time
on. I get the distinct feeling that quite a bit of film was cut out, causing
the narrative to occasionally feel disjointed and jumpy.
Still, Intermission's dialogue impresses. It is filled with dark humor and
snappy lines; none of it really sounds like something anyone would say, but
we find ourselves believing it anyway. An equal share of credit for this
must go to the screenwriter and the actors, nearly all of whom do strong
work. Cillian Murphy, from last year's 28 Days Later, balances anger and
sadness convincingly, as do David Wilmot and Kelly Macdonald. The real
stand-out, however, is Colin Farrell, speaking in close to his real accent,
who creates a creepily charming individual out of a decidedly amoral
character. It's finally a performance that manages to stretch his
considerable talent, and it's a shame that his work won't be seen by many.
(However, leave once the credits start, lest you be subjected to Farrell's
awful rendition of "I Fought the Law.")
There's just too much going on in Intermission to fit into 106 minutes, and
Crowley doesn't find the right balance between the narrative threads to make
it compelling. It's the kind of movie you can watch and respect for what it
does right but still not like it. In this case, unfortunatetly, good writing
and acting can't make up for the subpar direction.
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37510 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1269462 X-RT-TitleID: 1130755 X-RT-AuthorID: 9896 X-RT-RatingText: 2.5/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews