Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

jovana-13676 Had Albert Finney performed all alone in an empty room, it would have still been an equally entertaining film. Yes, for all its tragedy, the film is entertaining. Whenever Albert Finney speaks, and he hardly keeps his mouth shut during the film, it's pure poetry. It's one of the best scripts, not only dialogue wise, but the way it manages to bring to the screen and make us interested in one day in drunk's life. The characters are written so that one can hope for a happy ending - they are idealists. The drunk, his wife (Jacqueline Bisset) and brother (Anthony Andrews) are no ordinary people, they are all romantics who love one another and the world (it's 1938 and Nazism is on the rise), and in turn, we care about them and want this case of alcoholism / broken marriage to be fixed somehow. Or maybe if the guy is doomed then his wife can hope for a better life with his brother? Not so. This movie is like falling off a cliff and it ends abruptly. One can hardly believe it, because it's photographed beautifully and Jacqueline Bisset truly looks heaven sent. The opening Day of the Dead sequence is both stunning and foretelling.

federovsky A fateful day in the life of an alcoholic ex-consul Geoffrey Firmin in cliché-laden Mexico. We spend the first 20 minutes watching Finney reel around drunk. The next 90 minutes are also spent watching Finney reel around drunk, except when he's face down in the dust. He doesn't have a sober moment in the film. Lacking the book's ferocious intensity and torrent of personal impressions, all the film can do is patch together a story from shreds of eccentric behaviour.Lowry's bitter ode to self-destruction doesn't really come across and is undermined by the creeping feeling of sympathy we have for Firmin who gets increasingly childish as the day develops. There's little sense finally in his descent to the bar from hell like a naïve tourist on his first day in Mexico. So we are left to believe the drinking was because his wife had an affair and left him. The suspicious menage he keeps with his wife's ex-lover (Anthony Andrews) who at one point shaves and dresses him, is not explored - nor is anything else.Nobody perceives each other clearly and so there's nothing to hold it meaningfully together. At one point Andrews picks up a guitar and there's a mild tremor of interest to learn that he can sing - but he can't, it's a horrible noise and you begin to realise how desperate Huston must have been to flesh out the story.

lasttimeisaw Don't be fooled by the dark glasses in the cover of its DVD box or its poster, this John Huston film is not about a hipster's feel-good adventure and Finney is no Hercule Poirot here (although he does reunite with his co-star Bisset from MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS 1974, 9/10), the truth is, it is adapted from Malcolm Lowry's classic but "unadaptable" novel with the same title. Set in 1939, Mexico, starts on the eve of the Day of the Dead, it focuses on a former British consul's life in one-day span, plagued by incorrigible alcoholism and blindsided by his ex-wife's return with an attempt to rekindle their new life together, he begins to realize he is a lost cause which is beyond any succor, and the finale is both stalely traumatizing and embarrassingly contrived. But one sure thing is that Finney devotes fully to the role and evokes wondrous affections from the very beginning, he is a genuine force of self-destruction, a damaged soul would be a nuisance to others, but underneath his portly and alcohol-soaked figure, he represents one state-of-mind can virtually remind us how fragile and pathologically determined one can be, even it heads to a doom. His two co-stars, Bisset and Andrews, come on board also pretty strikingly with their different nature of temperaments, Bisset is the glamorous ex-wife who balks at her further step as we do watch her hemming in the quandary, Andrews is a pleasant matador, his side of the story should have been more explored, clearly he knows what had happened between the couple, but nobody cares to shed a light here, as the horrible coda lurks, the movie only manages to exert all its energy to an irksome case of xenophobia without giving any justice to its cause and effect. So undeniably Houston's later career wanes harshly in quality, still, a notable mention should be addressed to the legendary composer Alex North (grabs his last Oscar nomination out of a total 15 nominations without a win except an Honorary award in 1986), whose eerie opening score of the variegated skull show does set a high bar to what this anti-climax film would actually offer, sad to say but this is another John Huston work I dare not to advocate (after THE MAN WHO COULD BE KING 1975, 5/10 and PRIZZI'S HONOR 1985, 5/10).

nbott It is the finale of this film that redeems any possible weakness of the story one may entertain in one's mind as one views this film. The ending is so overwhelming, I had to watch it again at once. I then rewatched parts of the film just to luxuriate in the brilliant acting of Albert Finney. This is truly a masterpiece. There have been some criticisms of Ms. Bisset's acting etc, but this is small potatoes compared to the sheer genius of this story and its' realization. The music in the opening credits sets the tone and immediately draws you into the film. You know something profound will happen in the film and to you as you watch this film. Highly Recommended.