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Director: Paul McGuigan
Year: 2004
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Matthew (Josh Hartnett) is a young advertising executive who is dating the bosses daughter. He is about to leave on a business trip to China when he believes he sees an old girlfriend in a cafe. He secretly delays his trip to pursue this mystery woman he believes to be his long lost love Lisa (Diane Kruger).
From the way the film starts out, it feels it is going to be this weird mystery suspense movie full of betrayal and intrigue. And if you watched the trailer from when this movie was being released, you'd definitely think something else entirely because it is completely misleading and makes it look like a revenge horror flick. Really, it's the third option. It's just a weird convoluted love story of lies and missed connections. It's a story about a selfish, immature woman named Alex (Rose Byrne), who ruined the relationships of many people because she thought Matthew was cute. It's actually a little frustrating to watch evolve. You think it's going one place, but then jerks you in the opposite direction with no necessity to veer that way. None of the characters are all that likable and all do their fair share of stupid things throughout the course of the film.
The obsession element of the film is good, and while the acting is okay, the story is quite contrived. There are some interesting visuals from time to time, though. Paul McGuigan, the director of this movie, seemed to be more interested in making a visually interesting film than a compelling and thrilling one. Once again, we have to bring up the marketing element that was used for this movie. We would have preferred to have seen the movie advertised in the trailer, a horror-like film about revenge and the disappearance of a woman and ultimately convincing Josh Hartnett's character that he was crazy. This is the perfecting example of bait-and-switch marketing, but this time, it didn't help the film any. Plus, it is slowly paced and really drags throughout its almost 2 hour run time, which was completely unnecessary, by the way. By the halfway mark of the film, you are wishing it would have ended as it felt like it was going to end twice already.
Also, an editorial note: we didn't know Matthew Lillard did movies without Freddie Prinze Jr.
My Rating: 4.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 4/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 25%
Do we recommend this movie: No.
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One year ago, we were watching: "Salinger"
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