Wow. I think tour de force performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

I think anyone in a long-term relationship could relate to some of this movie. And anyone who feels trapped in the life he or she leads, in any way, could relate to this movie. There wasn’t a lot of character development in this movie, but the characters were very deep. And this movie was about the cracks that begin to show after a period of time.

So the characters didn’t change much from the actual start of the movie until the end, but the journey they took from the beginning to the end was fairly authentic. Even the snippets of the past were effective. Usually I think more is necessary. You can’t just show me time A and expect me to take it that it’s come to time B. It’s the problem The Break-Up [DVD] faced, though I didn’t think it did that bad a job trying. It just didn’t give me enough of the good stuff to care that the characters broke up. Perhaps because the characters in Revolutionary Road were so deep that I just bought into it more. Or perhaps because you saw the relationship breaking apart, but you also so a few nice times, you saw how it could break apart underneath the veneer of normalcy and perfection.

I’m just glad for a change there wasn’t some sort of crazy turn in the third act. Unlike so many movies I’ve seen lately, the third act wasn’t a betrayal of the first two acts. You’ll likely read a lot about how this might not be a great movie, but the performances are excellent. Or perhaps that there’s no reason to revisit this movie, but I’m not sure about either. I really enjoyed this movie and I think with repeat viewings I’d appreciate more the performances and the story.

For what it’s worth, I enjoyed this movie much more than Slumdog Millionaire or The Wrestler. I’m not saying this movie wasn’t without its fair share of cliche, but the cliches really took me out of the movie in Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler, but not so much in Revolutionary Road. A few things came close, but not too bad, except maybe the very last scene of the movie.

A lot of people don’t enjoy the crazy son’s character. The guys at Slashfilmcast didn’t particularly like the character. Why have a character spell out for the audience what’s on the screen, they asked. I’m not sure. I think it was a matter of a person not in this world being able to see through the facade. The son hadn’t bought into the world like the other characters had. He didn’t have any worth wrapped up in that life. So he could see the smoke and mirrors the others so willingly ignored. The part about him being crazy to allow him to disregard social rules was one of those aforementioned cliches that almost pulled me out of the movie.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

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[Blu-ray | DVD]

Okay, I’ll start by saying I’m not supremely familiar with the Coen brothers work. I’ve seen my fair share of their movies, but I couldn’t give you the full rundown of each and what the plots were without consulting IMDB. But my initial impression is just “So the Coen brothers made their Oceans movie.” I admit it’s not a perfect analog as the Coens tend to use their cast of characters and this is not everyone in a single plot but kind of tangential connections of fate. That being said it really seemed like Burn After Reading was a move made by the cast and Coens just to have some fun and hang out.

My second point, the totally false marketing campaign. The trailers really made it out to be some sort of hijinks filled comedy. But it really wasn’t. There were a few funny moments to be sure, but nothing you didn’t see in the trailers for the most part.

It’s not really worth going into the plot, suffice to say people are greedy, people want things, people betray other people, shit happens. I thought all the characters were pretty much caricatures rather than real characters with any kind of depth. I didn’t think the actors played anything other than the most obvious bits of some of their previous works.

All in all a fairly boring film.

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