Rating: 
Summary: Great Movie, stupid DVD full screen format
Review: I loved Fearless the 1st time I saw it. I bought the video as soon as I could. However, I'm sorely disappointed that the DVD has no widescreen format on it. Without this, I'll have to pass & keep wearing out my tape.
Rating: 
Summary: Fearless: just about flawless
Review: With only two reviews, this has got to be a sleeper, which will make it all the more surprising and powerful when you watch it -- and then talk a friend into watching it. This is a film about a plane crash. But it can't be summed up that way. No one thinks to herself, "Hey, tonight I really want to watch a movie about a plane crash." But you know how satisfying it is to watch a film so cathartic that by the time it's over you're a weeping, anguished heap? This is the film that will do it to you. How it's done is something else again: not with sap and gore but with the subtle, rising realization of utter horror. Even as I type this, I'm thinking of the movie's end and feeling my eyes fill with tears -- it only takes a few viewings to train oneself to that Pavlovian reflex of recollection and grief. The effective zap of the movie is delivered in a few unexpected ways. The plot is circular, working from the aftermath back to the tragedy itself. At first reflection, a non-linear format like this should hold no suspense. For it to work, the plot has to unfold like memory itself, and it does, inexorably, toward a crash whose resonsance has been established by aftershocks we've already seen. The second dynamic of this movie is Bridges. Jeff Bridges has his strengths and weaknesses as an actor. Anyone who's seen him in "The Vanishing" knows his nadir; but the role of Max Stein is probably his finest. All the characteristics that in other roles make Bridges seem mannered, odd, and even a bit wooden -- his muted deliberation, his subtle inwardness -- perfectly suit him for this role. Here, he's so deeply in the skin of his character that when the skin begins to peel off (only metaphorically) you can see his eyes screaming with the authentic pain of it. Bridges is the center of the film, but Rosie Perez is also amazing. The cinematography is great, and the atmosphere and tone that Peter Weir creates is distinct, reinventing the broad scope of Hollywood into something miraculously real. In the end, it's life-affirming without being at all moralistic. The title sums up it up: the impossibility of being fearless, its illusion which lures one into opposition to life itself, life which is based on emotion and immersion in the risk of living.
Rating:
Summary: The interesting part of survival
Review: While stories of disasters and how people survive them are pretty common fare, this is the first time I've seen a story about how people return to everyday life after surviving a disaster. This is a brilliant film, telling an engaging and insightful story, well acted and well directed. Prepare to be deeply moved if you watch this film, as two very different people attempt deal with their experiences, their altered perspectives, and their guilt, as well as their friends and families, who cannot understand what is going on. Peter Weir does it again!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Brilliant! Mind Awakening!
Review: Read Amazon's review below to try grasp an understanding of the brilliance. I watched it. I cried. I was stunned. Again I watched it to try be objective. Once again I was drawn in. Stunned.
Rating: 
Summary: Introspectively Inspirational
Review: I saw this movie and was enthralled . I would imagine that a person who experiences a near-death episode would rejoice and gain a higher vigor for life. But Bridges' character reacted with anger, confusion, and a traumatized awe at his survival. I found the subject fascinating and felt the movie was written and acted superbly. To watch the process of his re-emergence of his soul from such a psychological detour was to learn about the reciprocity of fate and free-will. I highly recommend this movie for introspective people.
Rating:
Summary: one of the most moving movies I have ever seen!!!
Review: When this movie ended, I sat there knowing my perspective on life was changed forever! Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez compliment each other in an unexpectedly refreshing way. Peter Weir has the ability to show his characters' souls- this is a very deep yet completely followable movie. Be prepared to watch it more than once! excellent!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Fearless is story of true human emotion
Review: This beautifully well acted and well directed movie is about a man who almost loses his life but never had any fear. Jeff Bridges is spectacular as a man lost to find himself as well conect with his wife and family again.
Rating:
Summary: A definite MUST SEE film!
Review: This is a "change your life" type of film. A survivor of a plane crash must come to terms with this new and improved, awakened and liberated version of himself, this version of himself that has suddenly been unburdened of a lot of timidity and fearful emotional baggage he'd been lugging around through his adult life. And those around him must also come to terms with this radically changed person that has emerged in the wake of his Near-Death-Experience. The movie is beautifully acted. Bridges' performance is exceptional, perhaps his finest. As are the performance given by Perez and Rossellini and the rest of the cast. Weir's directing is superb and sublime. The script is a beautiful distillation of finer points of the novel of the same name; and the use of time in this novel is brilliant. And the music ................. what can I say: this is one of my favorite soundtracks. This is movie of profound substance, profound enough to disturb, to awaken, to cause one to question one's life, perhaps even to effect real change. As Kakfa wrote, in a letter to a friend, "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. We need the books that affect us like a disaster, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us." I think Kafka would have really liked this film as it has high ax potential. Very highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A forgotten masterpiece of the '90's - one of Weir's best
Review: There are directors making movies of modern cinema, and then there's Peter Weir. Here's a guy who has never gotten the commercial success of Spielberg, the artistic raves of Kubrick, but equals or surpasses them on so many levels. Case in point: Fearless, another great film in a slew of great Weir films that takes a genre and doesn't necessarily break from it but explores it in unexpected ways. The subject of choice is an airplane crash, of which Max Klein (Jeff Bridges, lacking a deserved Oscar nom for this one) is one of a few dozen survivors. While many would be racked with grief (he lost his best friend and business partner), Klein experienced an epiphany of peace and bravery that carries through his experiences post-crash as well. We've seen things of this vein so many times that I thought I knew where Fearless was going, but at each end I was surprised. I expected romantic subplots and the like, but Weir holds the film with a knowing, masterful grace that he fully concentrates into the character Bridges plays. Fearless is less an exploration of grief than it is simply an intense look at the entire world of someone whose life is nearly taken. Rosie Perez receieved an Oscar nomination for her great work as a fellow survivor whom Max befriends, but the movie veers away from melodrama and woe-is-me theatrics even with them, instead showing what comfort we find among those who share our trauma. And Fearless never always seems like it's like the movie it appears to be, proof again of Weir's incredible talent of looking at a theme from another angle (what made Master and Commander an intimate character drama and not a mindless actioner). So much territory is covered in the film, yet it never seems dense, and the catharsis at the end is a payoff like none other. I found myself weeping at the film's magnificent finale - a lot - and yet the tears that Fearless elicits are not ones of sadness or happiness, but of satisfaction and pure emotional movement. It's nice to know there are directors out there who can make movies so powerful and yet never make us feel manipulated one bit. GRADE: A
Rating: 
Summary: Good Movie, But DVD Issue
Review: Although the theatrical aspect ratio of this movie was 1.85:1, while the DVD aspect ratio is 4:3, this is not a "Pan&Scan" DVD. In other words, almost none of the original theatrical image has been removed for exhibition on a 4:3 television screen. The film negative aspect ratio was 1.37:1 (almost 4:3), and for theatrical exhibition, the image was "matted" (partially covered from the top down and bottom up) to produce a 1.85:1 image. For exhibition on a 4:3 television screen, the "mattes" have simply been removed. So the DVD exhibition actually shows 25.9 percent more image than the theatrical exhibition. The movie was likely filmed this way so that the theatrical image wouldn't be butchered on television by the "Pan&Scan" process, and because the filmmakers didn't foresee the current state of the home video market, where consumers prefer movies presented in their theatrical aspect ratio, rather than in a ratio in which the image will fill up their 4:3 television screen (if there is a difference). This DVD presents the movie in the aspect ratio in which the filmmakers wanted people to see it on a 4:3 television, but it does not present the movie in the aspect ratio in which the filmmakers wanted people to see it in a movie theater (for that, the DVD would have to present the movie in a "matted widescreen" format). If you're okay with that, enjoy!
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