Too many fans seem to be blown away

A Major Disappointment

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Written before Full Monty but only released after, Among Giants treads a similar theme - the friendship/humor/repartee of northern working men, struggling to find meaning and existence in Thatcher's Britain. Trouble comes to the group with the introduction of an exotic outsider who, whilst initially bringing the whiff of promise to their otherwise dour existence, inevitably leads to the group's fracture. The stranger leaves, the horizon shrinks, with the slow grind of normalcy (and poverty) inevitably snaring the group again. In short, a story of a rare coming together, when a moment of sunshine briefly lingers on otherwise dark and penuried. Well written, strong acting, stunning visuals, and an aching, yearning soundtrack. Beautiful.

I really don't understand why this film has received such generally negative reaction. I agree that it does bog down in a couple of places, and maybe some of the charactors could have been developed in a litte more detail, but Postelwaite and Griffiths are thoroughly engrossing.Also, the film is visually very interesting. Someone has a real eye for shot construction.After looking at the user ratings, I was expecting to be disappointed. I wasn't.

Billed as a kind of sequel to The Full Monty, about unemployed men in Sheffield, this movie is a fake.As someone born in Sheffield, and still with links to the city, I was extremely disappointed by this film. Someone said it could have been set in Oklahoma, and that just about sums it up for me. This looked like a romantic view of northern England made for the US market. Probably many Americans - and many southern English people - don't realize that Sheffield is a big city of around half a million inhabitants, with a sophisticated urban culture. In Among Giants it was depicted as some dreary dead-end semi-rural small town, where everyone in Sheffield seemed to drink in the same old-fashioned pub, and where the people's idea of a party was line-dancing in some village-hall lookalike. This was a small close-knit community, not a metropolitan city.The working-class Sheffield men were totally unlike their real-life counterparts, who are generally taciturn and communicate with each other in grunts and brief dry remarks. They don't chatter, and they certainly don't sing in choirs.Even the rural settings, supposedly in the Peak District, looked alien to me. I recognized a few places where I used to go hiking, but some of the aerial shots of pylons stretching out over a bleak landscape reminded me more of Wales. Indeed, in the credits at the end I spotted a reference to Gwynedd, Wales. The Peak District is, in the summer, crawling with walkers and tourists in cars. It is situated between two big cities. It is not some kind of wilderness.As for the notion that a young woman could fall in love with, and lust after, Pete Postlethwaite, that was ludicrous, and could only have been a male dream. Her reasons for becoming his lover were never made apparent. None of the men was shown as having a partner or families; they existed in a vacuum.Anyone wanting to see a film about unemployed Sheffielders would have been led astray. This Sheffield existed only in the minds of its middle-class writers and film-makers.It was a gigantic fake!

When two of the best English actors working today are in the same film it is time to prick up your ears. Postelthwaite and Griffiths are casually superb in this film. "Among Giants" will stay with you - it is quirky and gritty and the visuals are haunting. The lives of these working class characters display dignity in obscurity. If you let the film take its meandering time you will grow to care about each character, and not just the superb leads. It is a wonder some films are ever made - not that they are not cookie cutter Hollywood retreads, but that there is still an audience for small films. Video has ironically been the savior of film.