Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying.
Review: "Ash Wednesday," actor-writer-director Edward Burns' attempt at an urban thriller, works beautifully as a mood piece but fails to be fully convincing as a crime drama. Set in the early 1980s in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen section, "Ash Wednesday" is about Francis Sullivan, a young Irish mobster trying to go straight, and what happens when his brother Sean--supposedly killed by rival thugs after whacking three of their crew--suddenly reappears after three years. Burns marinates us in the color and flavor of the gritty neighborhood--the photography, a palette of browns and grays, sets an intriguing tone, and David Shire's moody, jazzy piano score is a wow. But all the detail in the world can't hide the basic thinness of the story. We've seen variations on this story a thousand times before--from "Public Enemy" to "Mean Streets"--and Burns has nothing new to add. The cast is great--besides Burns as Francis, you have Elijah Wood as Sean and Rosario Dawson, Malachy McCourt, Oliver Platt and others in supporting roles. But although the actors give their all, we never feel we have enough background about the characters for them to really come to life. And the ending, meant to be a shocker, merely seems gratuitous. In all, the best you can say about "Ash Wednesday" is that it's an interesting disappointment. (Another disappointment: I wanted to buy the soundtrack CD for "Ash Wednesday," but discovered on this website that it contains NONE of Shire's outstanding music--only the songs on the jukebox in the characters' favorite hangout. If you want a collection of the greatest hits of Lynyrd Skynyrd, BTO, The Kinks, etc., this is probably a good buy, but if you want Shire's music, this is a REAL letdown.)
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying.
Review: "Ash Wednesday," actor-writer-director Edward Burns' attempt at an urban thriller, works beautifully as a mood piece but fails to be fully convincing as a crime drama. Set in the early 1980s in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen section, "Ash Wednesday" is about Francis Sullivan, a young Irish mobster trying to go straight, and what happens when his brother Sean--supposedly killed by rival thugs after whacking three of their crew--suddenly reappears after three years. Burns marinates us in the color and flavor of the gritty neighborhood--the photography, a palette of browns and grays, sets an intriguing tone, and David Shire's moody, jazzy piano score is a wow. But all the detail in the world can't hide the basic thinness of the story. We've seen variations on this story a thousand times before--from "Public Enemy" to "Mean Streets"--and Burns has nothing new to add. The cast is great--besides Burns as Francis, you have Elijah Wood as Sean and Rosario Dawson, Malachy McCourt, Oliver Platt and others in supporting roles. But although the actors give their all, we never feel we have enough background about the characters for them to really come to life. And the ending, meant to be a shocker, merely seems gratuitous. In all, the best you can say about "Ash Wednesday" is that it's an interesting disappointment. (Another disappointment: I wanted to buy the soundtrack CD for "Ash Wednesday," but discovered on this website that it contains NONE of Shire's outstanding music--only the songs on the jukebox in the characters' favorite hangout. If you want a collection of the greatest hits of Lynyrd Skynyrd, BTO, The Kinks, etc., this is probably a good buy, but if you want Shire's music, this is a REAL letdown.)
Rating: 
Summary: Diamond in the Rough
Review: An very good film, but not for everyone. It has a slow and deliberate pace with very little action. It's all about the story and the mood, not special effects. The acting and casting was excellent, with the exception of Elijah Wood. While he does a good job acting, I think he was miscast in his role. The musical score is fantastic as is the directing and cinematography. It all helps to set the mood.
The only place where Ash Wednesday falls short is in the lack of depth to the story. Burns did a good job with it, but would have been well advised to enlist the aid of a co-writer. I can't help but feel the story was lacking a certain ingredient that would have really brought it alive.
Ash Wednesday could have been a masterpiece but the storyline doesn't quite make it.
That said, Ash Wednesday is very good and I highly recommend it. Most films you pick will not be as good.
Rating: 
Summary: Ash Wednesday
Review: As an Elijah Wood fan, I stupidly spent the money to buy the DVD "Ash Wednesday" thinking that if Elijah was in it, it would be worth spending the bucks to see more hours of 'that face' on my television screen. Boy, was I wrong! What an awful movie! And frankly Elijah didn't do well in it because he didn't fit in! Surrounded by dirty, bitter, foul-mouthed losers, he could not quite find his niche. Further more, the storyline is ridiculous. At times it seemed that dialogue was being invented...which actually would be an easy undertaking by depositing a particular four-lettered verb between each and every syllable. If you like Elijah as I do, skip this movie. Buy the much more superior "All I Want".
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly entertaining
Review: Ash Wednesday is not a GREAT movie. You should know that right off the bat. It is not even a particularly GOOD movie. So that's the bad news out of the way.
The good news is, it isn't bad either, in its own way. It is extremely slow-paced at the beginning and quite repetitive, but the music and repetetiveness make it relaxing rather than boring; it becomes almost hypnotizing, at least if you're watching it late at night.The movie is about a family entangled in a mess of murderous criminals, a boy (Elijah Wood) who killed three of these criminals years ago and paid for it with his life, and his older brother who starts to hear rumors that his late sibling has been seen around town.
It doesn't have a lot in the way of plot, but once it gets going, not even that slows down this movie; it has midnight chases, tense moments, gunshots, scared girlfriends and mysterious people in the corner enough for any better-planned action movie, and it more than makes up for spending the first half of the movie watching the older brother walk around and run into people on the street. As I said at the beginning, this is not a great movie. But it should certainly be credited with being, for want of a better word, resourceful: it has a second-rate, predictable plot and not much else, but it takes what it has and runs with it and the result is surprisingly entertaining. (Also, fans of Elijah Wood, this will be a fun movie for you!)
Rating:
Summary: A SEASON OF REPENTANCE
Review: ASH WEDNESDAY is obviously Edward Burns personal paean to a lifestyle that has long since come and gone. But there are so marveolous moments of moviemaking in this stiff, leisurely and ultimately unsatisfying film.
Opening on Ash Wednesday in 1980 and closing on the day after Ash Wednesday 1983, the movie paints a bleak and oppressive view of gangland violence; of family loyalties; of deception and love lost and regained. It's interesting to see the Catholics with the ashen crosses on their foreheads, talking about offing someone or using the F word to the umpteenth level of tediousness. Burns as a screenwriter should have known better to infuse such foul language throughout the whole movie. I've always thought when the F word is used so much, the writer couldn't come up with anything really important to say.There's a lot of religious symbolism about mortality, repentance and forgiveness, too.
Another problem is that Burns didn't really give us a character to really care about. Even though the tragic end is not pleasant, what else could there be? Even in his heroic role, Burns is still a cold-blooded killer; his attempts at repentance don't really change him, and he commits the cardinal sin of sleeping with his brother's wife, knowing that his brother is really alive.
Burns does a good job in his role as Francis, a tormented young man who does his best to protect his brother and the brother's wife and son; no one even bothers to tell Sean that he has a son.
Elijah Wood tries hard, but he's horribly miscast. He seems mature and adult when he shoots the three men who are planning to kill Francis, but when he comes back, he seems just like Frodo, all youthful innocence and his stupid act of going out for a drink only reinforces the lad's immaturity.
Rosario Dawson isn't given much of a role, but sadly doesn't do much with what she is given.
Oliver Platt infuses his usual disgusting villainy into a smaller role, but he pulls it off well. James Handy as Father Mahoney also does a good job.
The photography is imaginative and the scenes of NY's Hell's Kitchen evoke a mood of gloom and hopelessness.
The musical score by David Shire is one of the most irritating scores I've had the displeasure to hear. The redundant use of the same solo piano runs gets awfully tedious; they're used too much and tend to distract more than accent the scenes.
ASH WEDNESDAY is a movie that might have been better, but if this is what Burns wanted to convey, one can only hope he matures in his future endeavors.
Rating:
Summary: great potrayal of Hell's Kitchen
Review: Burns',as always, is great in "Ash Wednesday. He captures the mood and essence of New York's "Hells Kitchen". The movie takes place in the 1980's and the music takes us back to that time. I am a native New Yorker and an avid fan of Ed Burns. Looking at his films always transports me back to NY, regardless of where I am.
If you love "Ed Burns", you will love "Ash Wednesday"!
Diane Gasparri Offutt
Woodstock, Georgia
Rating:
Summary: Developing a consistent voice
Review: Edward Burns is obviously a talent to watch. In ASH WEDNESDAY he explores the Irish men and women of Hell's Kitchen in a story about gangs and about familial devotion. Burns casts himself as the lead - a once bad guy who changes his ways to protect his little brother from the revenge of a killing. Displaying a keen knowledge of the interactions of the Irish families, interworkings with the Catholic Church, the seediness of Hell's Kitchen, Burns has gathered a fine cast which includes Elijah Wood, Oliver Platt, Malachy McCourt and an impressive group of lesser known actors to give a sense of realism to this sad story. The lighting is creepily superb and the filming techniques are in keeping with the overall mood of the piece. I take exception with the over-loud, boring/boorish piano music background which not only covers the spoken word at times, but is so consistently repetitive that it draws attention away from the story. Still, the over all effect is one of a young man growing solidly into a director and actor of signifcance.
Rating:
Summary: Burns/t Wood = Ash?
Review: Francis Xavier Sullivan--Francis X--is a marked man. But in the topsy-turvy world where Xristianity meets criminality, the + on his forehead is a plus; as with the T on the doorposts of the Israelites in Egypt, that mark (for the moment) spares him from the Angel of Doom. Poor Francis is a wanderer in Hell('s Kitchen), a soul so lost that the Resurrection of the Beloved Son cannot redeem him. He has tried to save himself by living the life of that Son, but in his bloodied hands even salvific Grace is corrupted. He is no Vicar of Christ, but a usurper, a brother-slaying Cain (also marked with a sign), if only vicariously. At the end of that brother's three days/years in the tomb, his return brings no release of the captives in Hell; this may be a descensus ad inferos, but Francis, unlike Adam et al., isn't willing to be released from the chains of the devil. Like the invitees to the king's wedding feast, he still has other "business" to attend to. (Here Mr. Wood, quoting himself, might well intone, "Showdown!") When he does finally put on the wedding garment, the robes of the Lamb, it is too late. The gates have been shut against him--or rather, he has shut the gate against himself.
Does this make any sense? Perhaps, in a Joycean way (which is to say, no!) Well, allegory that is too precisely A=B and B=C, ergo A=C isn't very interesting, is it? So, I will give it a B+ for effort. Allegory isn't a very popular genre nowadays, so we medievalists must be grateful for any half-successful attempt, though I, too, would complain that Irishmen generally have a larger vocabulary than here depicted. Someone should have given the script another rewrite, as well; inconsistencies of plot and character are more than an annoyance; they undercut the credibility of the whole. (How is it that Sean, the sheltered innocent, morphs into Quick-draw McGraw? And, Mr. Burns, Ash Wednesday is a movable feast, which would never recur on exactly the same day three years later--OK, OK, it's all figurative!) The pairing of Burns and Wood as brothers is a bit bizarre, but perhaps that's the point?
Rating:
Summary: See this movie!
Review: Go rent or buy this movie. It is totally worth it. Especially if you love Elijah Wood or Edward Burns. They do an amazing job in this film. It is an powerful movie about family and what you will do to help them. No matter what could happen to you for doing so.
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