I just saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was awful. I will elaborate but it was just awful in every way. The characters were shallow to the extreme. Found out nothing about them and could care less. It was interesting in the style of Bergman, ie. people talking little and lots of relationship stuff in Bergman style. Also interesting in that it tried to be the antiBergman-no despair, suicide, angst but love conquers all. (All this about Bergman because it is a Swedish film) The filmmaker was there for q and a and everybody was polite and did not criticize the movie but it was so sophomoric-could have been made by a high school film student except that high school relationships are more interesting. New York in the title but nothing about it was unique to New York. Polaroid camera cant take pics out of cars and you cannot get film for old, or new, Polaroid cameras any more. Sent an e-mail that was printed out but not read? The main character has a retarded emotional IQ.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Civic Duty
(2006)
war on terror gets personal with mild mannered accountant
30 April 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Just saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival. It is very good. There was a problem with the ending. The film ends emotionally when the man shoots his wife but there is another scene. In that scene you are lead to doubt that the middle eastern type is really innocent. The director, or whoever, it was at the screening, said that you are supposed to see that as a product of the psychosis of the main character. All this is hard to follow without going into more detail if you haven't seen the movie. But I don't want to go into more detail and spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the movie. Anyway, there is no point to that last scene-if to show that the guy is crazy-that is already known-if to show that middle eastern type really is guilty, that plot twist is too clever and without justification. The only one I can think of is that without that scene, the movie could be seen as too left wing-paranoid accountant unjustly accuses middle eastern guy-and would not be accepted for distribution ? They should have left that ending out and gone back to the relationship with the wife and given her more dialog at the end before he kills her. The interesting thing is her love for him even though he is apparently chronically intermittently paranoid.
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