Sadly Over-hyped

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Movies like this don't appeal to me on the surface level. Principal characters with a negative attitude and quarrelsome disposition are an immediate turn-off. But Johnny (David Thewlis) is a train wreck in motion and it's hard to avert one's attention from his intelligent dialog, difficult to separate from the idea that he's a social misfit of the first order. Director Mike Leigh makes this film a statement about homelessness, urban alienation, sexual violence and drug abuse, and does so in a masterful way as Johnny makes his way amid a London underbelly on the verge of disintegration. The picture offers any number of derelict characters, and the one that transfixed me the most was that whiplash-head guy who looked like he might have just stepped off a Saturday Night Live set. He would have been right at home with someone like Massive Head Wound Harry. For all his dysfunctional behavior, it was the paper hanger guy who eventually got around to doing what I would have liked to do to Johnny myself, and for a film and an actor to elicit that kind of reaction, it has to be firing on all cylinders. Not for the faint hearted, but if you're having a bad day, this is the kind of picture that might actually lift your spirits.

I thought I'd been pretty much exposed to all of Mike Leigh's style, but with this he totally surprised me. It's definitely the darkest film from him I've seen, and very hard to stomach in some of its depictions. Thewlis plays a despicable character that really left me cringing, yet when all is said and done wen when it's needed, gives him a good bit of humanity. It's an amazing performance, completely devoid of any flash or style to just deliver some gripping acting. The film's narrative is also not as plot-driven as his other films, which maybe will alienate so many of his fans. This is recommended, even if I'm not sure I liked it that much at certain times.

This a movie where you shouldn't expect a story that has a start , serious of conflicts, and then a end. Its no where even near to that kind. The movie says abt a rapist who runs away from the town to his Ex- girl friend's place. The one thing that wont let you take your attention off it is David Thewlis's (Johnny) performance. You just can't think of a something better than this. The second thing is Mike Leigh's dialogues.. Oh hell ! how can one write his lines like this? And the way it was delivered was in full justice to it. The story - ahh there is no story to say from the movie. There is only a Life >> Naked Life in it. With the title you can expect some movie that is filled with the all nudity , love making scenes in it.. If you do so you are completely wrong ... The movie doesn't include too much of characters in it But every character occupies a decent space in the script.. And what if I said majority of them play strangers in the movie. I have mixed feelings for this movie..I did feel hard to get out of it even. But all i can say is Its strong, real and NAKED!

A weird film! The good bit is David Thewlis' Existential p**s-taking discourse with everyone he comes across - the bad bit is - everything else. Also, it's way too long. The charm had worn off. Ends up being long-winded and pointless - whereas had it been shorter it would have been bitter-sweetly succinct. Johnny, is the archetypal street philosopher, though instead of being a wise vagabond - he is in fact an on the run vagrant - on the run from life, that is. Also - who the f**k is Sebastian?All of that aside though, I have a real problem with Mike Leigh's films. He tries TOO hard to come across as authentic and real - and this effort becomes so conspicuous that it clouds everything else and it's all you can see. His films aren't authentic and real - they're the opposite of that - they're overdone and contrived. Most of his stuff ends up being a bunch of middle-class loveys performing their perception of an Idyll of plucky, chirpy, working-class folk! I suspect that the only thing that saves this film from becoming that, is the intensive involvement of Thewlis in developing the script and dialogue.Basically Leigh's approach in depicting authentic realistic working class characters, ends up producing a facsimile that is strikingly recognisable to the original article - but one that exaggerates the more obvious features - to a cringe-making degree. He creates cinematic caricatures.