Journey to the End of the Night

Journey to the End of the Night

Journey to the End of the Night

Brendan Fraser should avoid playing the bad guy. Maybe avoid drama altogether and still to comedies, animated movies and children's movies. His portrayal of a badass villain is so bad it's laughable - you'd think it was a parody of a villain. His performance is so bad it goes past good and back to bad again. However, Fraser does not single-handedly ruin the movie, though his performance was capable of doing that. The plot is wafer-thin too. Tries too hard to be gritty and instead ends up a random, gratuitous- violence filled mess. Just seems to drift along haphazardly with no point at all. Mos Def's performance is one of the few positive aspects of the movie. Quite convincing. Scott Glenn is pretty solid in his role too. Other plus is that the movie is reasonably short...

those are two words to describe this drama/thriller.when drugs and violence take over your life and you spiral out of control,there is no way out.that's the case with Paul(Brendan Fraser)who sees no future and nothing but despair.greed and(self)hatred are his best friends.Fraser puts in in an astounding performance here proving he really has some acting chops.Scott Glenn is also good as Sinatra,Paul's father.but by far,the best actor in my mind is Mos Def,who plays Wemba.he really loses himself in the role.there is a fair bit of very strong language and brutal violence in this film,so be warned.for me,Journey to the End of the Night is an 8/10

Filmed on a budget of six million, this movie made forty nine thousand worldwide and it's not hard to see why. Plot holes the size of Manhattan and a cast of characters that are risible to say the least. The sleaze factor is high (but then who gives a damn if the movie is any good - which it ain't!) Scott Glenn and Brendan Fraser as a father/son duo who own a brothel in Sao Paulo, who enlist the aid of a Nigerian dishwasher to sell a suitcase full of cocaine to fellow Nigerian gangsters. Glenn hands the suitcase over to the dishwasher and sends him on his merry way to do the deal and bring back the money with only the dishwasher's word that he will return. Hmm... Bound to be a doublecross there. Well, guess what? There ain't. And the gangsters hand over the money with no argument, even though they are armed to the teeth, the dishwasher is completely alone and unarmed. Okaaaaay... There's also an old geezer of a fortune teller in the mix, who tells the grandmother of a girl who has absolutely no purpose in the story that her granddaughter is going to die. And she dies. The fortune teller drifts in and out of the story for no apparent reason (is he symbolic of something? Only the writer/director knows.) The dishwasher is mugged but the muggers overlook the backpack full of money he is carrying. Okaaaay... Various complications, including a shootout between Brendan, Glenn and a transvestite who gave such great sex at the start of the movie that the original Nigerian scheduled to make the drug deal dropped dead. Hmm... (Only the writer/director knows.) An unbelievably convoluted plot that careens all over the place with zero credibility. Where the performances are concerned, Fraser does his hardest to flesh out his thoroughly dislikable character, as does Glenn, who has his legs chopped out from under him by the writer/director's unsympathetic backstory. Catalina Moreno as the love interest for both father and son gives a credible performance, though she has little to do, aside from being abused and insulted by Brendan. The one good performance in the movie comes from Mos Def as the dishwasher. Nicely understated. The movie was made on the streets of Sao Paulo, which is five times the size of Paris, but might as well have been made on a couple of backstreets in Brooklyn or Queens for all the scope of the movie. The contrast between the wealthier neighborhoods of the real Sao Paulo and the impoverished backstreets fails to appear in this flick. The dialog is graphic in the extreme, which only produces guffaws of laughter at the writer/director's expectation of shock value in the viewer. If the story was stronger (or more credible) the dialog might have worked. As it is, one merely chuckles at the naughty words. This reviewer virtually NEVER consigns a DVD to the garbage bin (paid good money for the damn thing!) but one viewing of this waste of time was enough. Watching the interviews with the people involved in the making of this movie, one has to wonder what they ever saw in it in the first place. As mentioned at the beginning of this review, it cost six million to make and only earned forty nine thousand at the box office. Those people who paid forty nine thousand would now like their money back.

This movie is set in Brazil Brendan Fraser is the son of a pimp that owns a nightclub and they are trying to move a deal forward that is risky and has a lot hanging in the balance. The characters are very richly done with lots of tension over a deal and the entire movie revolves around it. A number of characters accidentally cross each other's path and wind up influencing each other and I enjoyed that part of it as well. This is a dark and violent movie but very well acted and a decent script that has an attention to detail you don't normally see these days. The only part I didn't like about the movie is it was unrealistic when Brendan's character actually cared what a fortune teller had to say- it's hard to believe a hardened criminal would worry about what he had to say for a second.

It's interesting that so many people either rated this movie a 9-10 or a 1-2. I would suggest that those at the high end were dazzled by the setting and those at the low end were disappointed by the hodgepodge of what occurred there. I can't get excited enough to go to either extreme. I agree with those who said that Brazil was unused except perhaps as a marketing tool for the movie. There was virtually no interaction with the local culture except as a passive backdrop. The acting was uninspired. I didn't think Def was all that great, although at least he underplayed his pathetic role, unlike Fraser who was over the top to the point of ridiculous. In fact the only character that seemed decently played was the relatively obscure blind seer. The plot was full of holes, disjointed, and had no twists of any note. While others have detailed some of the major problems, I would add in the assertion that thieves set upon Def, knock him out, and then ignore the backpack laying next to him and run off without it. And he lays there in what appears to be a high crime district for quite some time and nobody chances by to see what might be in the backpack. You also have to swallow a gang packing all manner of weaponry who decides who they deal with and don't deal with based on which Nigerian dialect they speak. How's that again? I can make a million dollars doing a drug deal with you but only if you speak a specific language from my home country. Otherwise, the deal is off. Right. Then we have Def with a suitcase full of cash but unable to make a phone call. It wasn't clear why that might be exactly, but he never asks anyone for change, tries to change one of the bills in the pack, or does anything else to make what is supposed to be a critical call. Someone said he was cast in a racist and degrading role. I don't know about that, but he certainly seemed to be playing a character who was just plain stupid and unassertive. Quite a contrast with Hitchhiker, in which he was the hip insider. I'll take the latter. Still, there was some action, enough of a plot not to fall asleep on, a few bizarre characters of passing interest, some gore, a touch of sadism, interesting lighting at times ... I didn't fast forward it at any point. Mediocre but sufficiently entertaining to keep your attention. See it if the alternative is reruns on TV.

Prospective viewers, beware that this movie is completely devoid of substance and will provide you with a story that is neither intelligent nor coherent, neither insightful nor memorable. The story, which I found interesting for approximately the first 5-10 minutes or so, quickly devolves into foolishness and stupidity and, ultimately, leads nowhere. At one point, a soothsayer actually becomes, or seems to become, a central component of the plot. If that doesn't demonstrate to you how silly this movie is and how little it deserves your attention, I guess nothing will stop you from watching it. Let's assume that you do choose to view it. Just remember that as you watch it and increasingly ask yourself the questions "where is this plot going?" and "is all this going to come together at the end?", you are in for some nasty surprises. My friends, you are embarking on a long journey to nowhere. Can't say you weren't warned. Remember though: it's never too late to press the "stop" button on your remote!

This is an interesting work in the film noir/gangster genre. The story has to do with the bad blood between father and son, played out over one night in Sao Paulo. The tone and mood of the movie seem to reference many more famous, high profile films that deal with the same topic matter. This one seems very interested in stylization over telling a completely coherent story. And its this stylization that sets it above regular crime dramas. Bredan Fraser plays the loser, coke addicted son without any fear of looking bad. HIs performance is very emotional and wild. Not easy for any actor to pull off. His character is a villain without any morals. Made that way by his father, Scott Glenn, an initially likable, sympathetic sort, who, as the tale unravels, is not so nice a guy after all. By far, the film's hero, Mos Def (the only hero because everyone else is evil or not big enough to really know) gives a winning, career defining performance as a Nigerian immigrant who, out of loyalty to his employer, agrees to partake in a drug deal. The "raptor" gives a nuanced, thoroughly believable performance as wemba in maybe his best role as a film actor. The other big star of the film are the colors. The nighttime images and camera. It appears to be heavily saturated and grainy and apparently enhanced through the DI process. Cinematographer aficionados will surely want to see this for the interesting lighting. If the film has a flaw, I would cite an overall bleak and hateful tone of the script. Very anti- human being. The violence feels almost gratuitous with some shots of face slashing feeling too long or ultimately unnecessary. The squeamish will look away! But nothing very troublesome compared to the gore in the horror genre. Recommended to those who like dark material.