I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It's not that I would mind a good movie about relationships. But to be good it has to tell me something about human nature that I haven't seen or thought about. Or tells it to me in a fashion that shows an interesting twist or point of view about the subject; be it love or illness or death or friendship or what have you that moves humans. But this movie just has nothing to say about any of this, except that it does happen. Nowhere are we given any reason as to why people act the way they do. The characters are portrayed over a pretty long period of their lives, which take some quite big turns. Not only are we not given their motives for the paths they take, but it also seems that the characters themselves don't really reflect on what happens. It just does and did. That's life. Oh well, let's move on to the next scene.

I watched this one only for a single reason: Claire Forlani. She is so beautiful that I can't express it with words (and I couldn't in German as well, so it's not a genuine language problem).In this movie, she is married to a writer and his best friend somehow falls in love with her - well, seeing her in her full beauty makes this biggest of loyalty breaches understandable in my book.But the director seems to see the act of cheating as the ultimate sin. I don't want to spoil too much here, not that there would be too much to spoil anyway, but I really felt that the moral index finger of the film makers was too much to swallow. Okay, it's nothing a friend should do to cheat on his best friend with his wife - but hey, feelings sometimes make us do things that are not really clever, but still that's what feelings are there for in a way... and since it always takes two persons to cheat on a third one, I really could not understand what this movie wanted to express in the end. Drama? Yes. Romance? A little. Relevance? None at all. That is except for watching Claire Forlani looking like an angel - again.

The dialogue in this film is outstanding, and the male characters are representative of a wonderful relationship between friends. It also speaks of how difficult it is for some young adults in their late 20's and early 30's to leave their childhoods behind. How good people who love each other can hurt one another. I truly enjoyed this film, and it left me thinking about the characters and their lives. They were so very real and representative of many of us that I continue to wonder why we behave as we do.

I'm not going to reveal the plot, but you can figure it out yourself after the first five minutes. This shouldn't stop you from seeing the movie, though, because you will still be on the edge of your seat rooting for the characters, whom you will come to know and be passionately involved with in the course of the movie. The acting is uniformly excellent and completely seamless; you get so involved with the character you feel you actually are there with them living their lives, and you forget that you are only watching them on the screen. The actors can't take all the credit, because the dialog is realistic to the point of being slightly uncomfortable to watch. I can't say whether it is the acting, the directing or the screenplay that deserves the credit here, but you could also say the same for American Beauty.I am writing this two days after having seen the movie and I still somehow feel that everything that happened in the movie also happened in my own life. Can you really expect any more from a movie?