This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

As an amateur movie watcher I don't know much and I care even less at this point about visual effects and studio gimmicks, and I didn't even know about the 95 manifesto until I read some of the reviews for this title; instead, what I care about is the story and the message it sends, how and indeed if it manages to do so, and how the actors act. And for all those, this is a masterpiece.This is a story about how life gets, the message is that love just happens, it just happens to some of us at the weirdest of times, and, if one cares to understand this, it's for the better, while if they don't, they will just suffer anyway. It is not the first Susanne Bier film I see and this is the sort of message she knows how to convey.As for the acting, it is brilliant. Just thank God for Mads Mikkelsen. If you like this actor, see Open Hearts today! There is at least one scene which you will rewind. More than once.

"Open Hearts" is a film I decided to see simply because Mads Mikkelsen starred in the movie. He's done some incredibly impressive films-- including three films nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar! However, the movie itself is the sort of thing I usually wouldn't watch, as it's about adultery and I am a VERY traditional man and was afraid the film might glamorize the affair. Fortunately, it did not and the film is well worth seeing.The film has a difficult to believe plot. However, because it is well directed and acted, it works. It begins with a young couple becoming engaged and looking forward to a married life. However, one day the man gets out of his car and is struck by another car. The guy is nearly killed and ends up being a quadriplegic! Now here's the odd part. The driver's husband (Mikkelsen) works at the hospital and over time he and the fiancée (Sonja Richter) become intimate. Soon they are having an affair and he is having a hard time keeping it secret. What's next? See the film. This film is supposedly from a director from the Dogma 95 movement-- Susanne Bier. However, the film does not completely conform to the unusual and rigid 'manifesto' that Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg created as the Bible, so to speak, of these style films. While it's very much like a Dogma 95 film in some ways (its extensive use of the hand-held camera, the use of natural settings and not sets as well as that the story is about normal folks in the present), it's also quite unlike a Dogma film (such as using grainy black & white footage during one small portion, the use of fake blood and some of the music is not naturally occurring background music). My attitude is who cares?! As long as the film is well made and engaging, that's what is important. While this isn't as good as the Bier/Mikkelsen collaboration "After the Wedding", it is a superior film. It's just too bad that there is some nudity throughout the film because I actually think it's a great film for teens to see as the object lesson I took from it is that there are consequences for an affair--good and definitely bad.

There are many reviews telling you about the story about a wife or gf what ever gets involved with a married man. This married man is a doctor with 3 kids. He nails this girl because of sympathy , empathy or for that matter she has a tight body and his wife is saggy hag. so that makes it easy for him to make a choice between the two women. now to add twist in the tale it is the doctors wife who accidentally has mowed down this guy who is paralyzed from his neck below. so the doctor gets to hump his own wife as well as his paralyzed patients wife. during the whole movie no cops are involved, no lawsuits are filed and the doc is having a time of his life humping the two ladies. The biggest loser in the whole movie is the guy who was caught in the accident. he loses his girl, his job, his life is focked up. his girlfriend is humping the doctor and the bitch wife who started the whole fiasco gets alimony and child support for her 3 kids. she is happy, the gf of the paralyzed guy is happy with the doc and the doc is happy with his new tit carrier and pole polisher with bouts of sadness when he tears those alimony and child support check. This is my outlook an synopsis of the movie.

A girl whose boyfriend went paraplegic because of a car crash falls in love with the husband of the woman that ran her fiancée over. Though the plot may look like a twisted soap opera the fact is that the movie of Akeson & Olesen is such an intense and wise portrait of human emotions. Feeling of guilt, love, infidelity... no flowery stuff and no useless decorations. "Open hearts" is a piece of life.Despite the directors probe to know their job their movie wouldn't be the same without the impressive work of the extraordinary actors she chose. Propably none of them will won an Oscar, and they're not very popular, but they'd deserve to be big stars.Another great contribution of DOGMA movement to last decade's cinema.*My rate: 9/10