The End of Violence

Rating:
Summary: Far Away, Yet So Close of Something...
Review: Of course that The End of Violence isn't as great as great Paris, Texas (a few movies are). But Wenders is trying hard to answer himself some question: images, virtuality&reality, relationships, humanity, past&future. Well, if someone else is interested in such things, should see this movie. The soundtrack is simply marvelous, one more time by Ry Cooder. Far away of plain hollywood movies...

Rating:
Summary: I'm a computer scientist. This is Hollywood.
Review: Painfully, Wim Wenders pushes us through two hours of convoluted story, comatose characters, and an array of random lines all attempting to connect at some point. What begins as a political thriller slowly devolves into a poorly executed social rampage on lies, privacy, law, and corruption. Nothing in this film makes any sort of coherent sense.

Byrne plays a computer nerd that is searching for that shred of human decency through the lens of a Government issued spying device that currently surrounds Los Angeles. Bill Pullman plays a business Hollywood producer that will put money before any living soul. Somehow, these two have met in another life and this is where our story begins. Thankfully, Wenders decided not to show us any pre-story, so we are forced to watch the consequences of an unseen action. So, struggling to keep up, I watch as an unused Andie MacDowell stumbles through her lines obviously not comfortable with her character. Then, out of the middle of nothing, I witness the detective that should be solving the surrounding case instead trying to fall in love with a struggling actress that Pullman gave a big break to. This is the perfect example of random lines trying to connect, but never do.

Mix in this big Government conspiracy and you have the entire half-eaten pie known as The End of Violence. Reminiscent of a fever dream, Wenders tries intentionally to build this film into a budding social commentary on Hollywood and the control of our Government in a very 1984-esque fashion, but fails. One of the biggest failures of this film is his use of poetry to do ... well ... something. Whenever I thought that I was on the right path, that the film was suddenly going to come alive, I was quickly sidetracked by narrations from other characters in the form of beat-poetry. What?

This is a pure example of what happens when ideas are more powerful in the mind than on the screen. I could see where Wenders wanted to go with this film, but unfortunately, it never got there. You could tell that he was one of those kids in school that would write a report about a very heated topic, but never really put any meat on the issues. He would just jumble through the motions, hoping to hit a chord with someone ... anyone.

What a sad, sad film.

Grade: * out of *****

Rating:
Summary: pure garbage(-2stars)
Review: They need a negative system to rate this one right.Just remember that time is precious and I would not recommend wasting time out of your life for this.

Rating:
Summary: absolute rubbish.
Review: this could have been a good film except for the fact that it was too slow moving and whenever you felt something good about to happen it changed scenes to something else.seemed like an artsy fartsy attempt to outdo something in the same category as "the player". Failed miserably.

Rating:
Summary: Eh...
Review: Too self-consciously artsy-fartsy for my taste. This is the sort of movie pretentious people love since it allows them to make a big show of pretending to appreciate something "challenging" that a general audience would not "get". If you don't have that sort of agenda when watching a movie, however, you might want to stay away from this one. It's deliberately obscure in many places, to the point of self-indulgence and beyond. There was enough in it for me to care vaguely about the Pullman and Byrne characters, but I still felt like I had just wasted 2 hours by the end. It seemed much longer.

Rating:
Summary: A Thoughtful Film
Review: While I certainly recommend The End of Violence, I do so with some mixed feelings. One the one hand, it is full of *obvious* commentaries on the negative impact of violence in Hollywood and society; the dangers of government activities being kept secret; and how fast-paced lives lead to empty relationships. On the other hand, this is all true and the movie holds the entertainment industry acccountable for promoting much of that, rather than just saying that entertainment is a reflection of society. And people do need to be more connected with, or present in, their own lives, as the film underscores.

I enjoyed the cutting away to the different yet related scenes, though I agree with the others here who wrote that the subject matter would have been better served by a longer film. Most of the actors and actresses did a fine job, from the small but moving role of the elderly father to Bill Pullman playing the lead of Mike Max the film producer. But Andie MacDowell was inconsistent in the role of his neglected wife wanting more from life. In her biggest scene, in the living room at night, she might as well have phoned-in her badly recited lines. It was also annoyingly clear that she wasn't borthering to listen to her fellow actor, Bill Pullman, who, in striking contrast, is always fully present in his roles.

I just wish that what I saw was a work-in-progress, as this film could have been better.

Rating:
Summary: A PROVOCATIVE MIND PUZZLER
Review: Wim Wender's End of Violence is a movie splattered with many interesting ideas. Gabriel Byrne sits in a top secret government observatory watching everything that goes on in the city, and in the biginning of the film watches a botched attempt on an arrogant producer played by Bill Pullman. In a way the film is the story of the producer's redemption, who after surviving the incident and living with Mexican farmers gains a new presepective on his life.

Another major theme in the film is the invasion of privacy on the part of the Byrne character, the film is perhaps saying that if the forces that be can see everything that goes on there would be an "end of violence", end of crime, and all illegal behaviour, and how that plays against our right to privacy. I say "perhaps" because Wenders never makes these points too clearly, you have to make conclusions yourself from images and events on the screen, which is something that I consider a plus.

Unfortunately the film has other subplots that have little to do with these magor themes. Whats the deal with the stunt woman turned actress story line, or those yuppie poetry readings, all of which are a little too "new age" for my taste.

The final verdict is that End of Violence is an intresting if unsatifying movie experience. I do however enjoy watching the underappreciated Gabriel Byrne and Bill Pullman, both of whom always bring something extra to any role they are cast in. If you're looking for a more satisfying film by Wenders I suggest you buy his 1984 masterpiece Paris, Texas or better yet Wings of Desire 1988.