Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

SnoopyStyle In 1936, the Spanish civil war pitted the fascists against the leftist Republican army. Manolo Torres (Wes Bentley) and Josemaría Escrivá (Charlie Cox) are childhood friends. Manolo's family is rich but he's envious of his friend's attentive father. Manolo's father is killed by a communist and Josemaría becomes a priest. In present day Spain, Manolo's son Robert (Dougray Scott) is writing a book on Josemaría Escrivá who is in line for canonization. Roberto is estranged from his father and tries to understand him and his complicated friendship.Director Roland Joffé has written a confused convoluted epic. It tries to do so much that it ends up doing nothing. Roland is trying so hard to have this an overwrought melodrama. I don't find Robert and his investigation that compelling. Manolo and Josemaría are competing to be the lead. I would have preferred a more straight-forward telling of their story and less epic musical cues. He should let their story speak for itself and not try to make an opera.

chrisgilbey There are reviews in IMDb that praise this movie. I don't know by what standard they measure movie making, but I would have to say that this movie is one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. Lets take the music. It soars, but in all the wrong places. It emotes, with all the wrong signals. It is woefully inappropriate. It is so full of choral voices that I truly have to believe that the composer and arranger were reading a different script or watching different rushes when they wrote the score. Lets take the script. It is full of utterly trivial dialogue. There just isn't very much that I can say other than it is horrendous. The cinematography is not bad. The DOP did a fine job. The acting. Why is it that we haven't seen the lead actors in other movies? Could it be that when they put footage from this movie in their show reels they were automatically dropped out of contention? Good looking actors with poor scripting, and worse storyline. You have to sympathise with them.... really. So what on earth were people like Charles Dance and Geraldine Chaplin doing in this movie? You would have to believe that they owed the director or the producer a favour. I can't believe that they could need the money that badly! So do yourself a favour and return the DVD to your local store before you waste the time to put it in your DVD drive....

meitschi I have read many terrible reviews of this film and expected something bland and convoluted, but after a few minutes, the visuals and storytelling really drew me in. Yes, some parts of the dialog are quite cheesy or too obvious, and the combination of the stories of Manolo and Josemaria is far from perfect. But Joffé is a very visual filmmaker, and so he was able to achieve with his beautiful images (kudos to Gabriel Beristain for his stunning visuals!) what he wasn't perfectly able to do with his dialog: to impress and inspire.It was especially interesting how delicately and plausibly Joffé handled many real-life events from St Josemaria's life - scenes that could have gone terribly wrong in less expert hands. He also payed a lot of attention to visual detail - for example, in the end titles, the photos of the actors that portrayed real-life people are combined with real photos of these people.The less interesting storyline was that of Manolo, though the final revelations were nevertheless disturbing enough. (At the same time, the movie has an astonishing lack of both gore and even the slightest touch of sensuality in it - surprising for a film about war and a destructive passion... They probably didn't want to lose the PG-13 rating, did they? ;-))I guess, it's a movie for open-minded people with a taste for old-school movie-making, grand drama and big moral questions.

jlm-6 I had reason to spend several hours with and paying close attention to the views of the filmmaker, just before the film premiered in Spain; and I found both him and his thinking, truly, fascinating! I found it equally fascinating that a man who had, once, moved audiences with The Killing Fields and The Mission, should believe that this overly plain, almost amateur feel-to-it film - which I had seen, the week before - could ever be expected to transmit to post-Avatar 3D audiences, far less caught up than Roland Joffé in the importance and purpose of redemption in modern-day society.I, for one, agree that learning to forgive is essential and that without it, we can never find our humanity. Also, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with 'amateur': the word implies love and vocation, and I'm good with that. 'Overly plain', however, did all-too-frequently smack of 'low-budget, tinny dialogs' and 'shallow performances' - with, to some extent, the exception of Derek Jacobi.I simply think that people turn to movie theaters for an experience they could never get from multimedia and home cinema; and movie theaters agree to deliver such an experience. And, though some of the action scenes were not entirely uninteresting (and we're, honestly, not asking for Terminators and Jurassics), to make - for general release - an entertaining and viable movie about the value of 'redemption' would appear to be as commercially unlikely as would making a movie about generosity or about humility. Such 'virtues' will either seep through the plot and hit viewers - and, hopefully, stay with them long - after they have left the theater or they won't! Yet, to play such virtues so close to the plot is - I feel - sadly counterproductive, from both a storytelling and a film-viewing point of view.Mr. Joffé is sure to have enjoyed the experience, engulfed - as he will have been, throughout the film-making process - by this ubiquitous purpose, impregnating so many of his thoughts and actions. It's a shame he didn't give a little more importance to his side of this mutual selfishness pact we call 'film-going': that way, many thousands more might have enjoyed the experience, too.