Memorable, crazy movie

hyped garbage

How sad is this?

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Successful shoe designer Lisa (Laura Linney) dies from cancer leaving her husband Peter (Liam Neeson) and her daughter Abigail (Romola Garai). Peter is a successful software entrepreneur. He discovers a voice message from a mystery man looking for his late wife and he cracks her password for a hidden cache of love pics. His security team uncovers her lover as Ralph Cortez. He goes to Milan and befriends Ralph without acknowledging his wife. Abigail begs him to stop his angry obsession.This is a great cast but the drama isn't there. There is no tension. There is a possibility of a dramatic turn but it goes in the opposite direction. There is a surprising reveal but it doesn't add to the drama. There is a message here as long as the audience is awake to see it. This is a short movie and yet it feels overly long.

The Other Man is directed by Richard Eyre who co-adapts the screenplay with Charles Wood from a short story written by Bernhard Schlink. It stars Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Antonio Banderas and Romola Garai. Music is by Stephen Warbeck and cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos.Neeson plays Peter, a tortured husband who upon finding evidence of his wife's infidelity, travels to Milan to confront her lover in the hope of understanding.There is nothing remotely funny about infidelity, it can wreck lives. Sadly The Other Man is a funny film, though not intentionally. It so often misses the beat of real grief and anger, throwing up ridiculous situations that beggar belief, it's often impossible to take seriously, so much so that when the big reveal etc comes crashing forward, the emotional impact is null and void. There's a couple of decent plot turns and the Italian locales are gorgeously photographed, but the script is trite, the score out of sync and ultimately it wastes a damn fine cast. 5/10

The plot twist is a cinematic device which we normally associate with the thriller genre. You all know the sort of thing I'm thinking of- a villain believed to be dead is suddenly revealed to be alive and the hero in mortal peril from him, or the hero's best friend/girlfriend/boss turns out to have betrayed him and to be in league with the villains. "The Other Man", however, is film that makes use of a similar twist ending, even though it belongs to a very different genre, being a psychological melodrama rather than a thriller. As the film opens we are introduced to Peter and Lisa, a seemingly happily married middle-aged couple with an adult daughter, Abigail. They live in a large house in the Cambridgeshire countryside and both have professional careers, she as a shoe designer, he in the computer industry. As the story moves on, however, Peter begins to suspect that his wife may have taken a lover. (She by this time appears to have disappeared from the action). Documents and photographs found on Lisa's computer suggest that Peter's suspicions are justified and that Lisa's lover is a man named Ralph living in Milan, where Lisa frequently travelled on business. Desperate to find out more about his wife's lover, he manages to track Ralph down in Milan and meets him in a café without revealing his true identity. The two men play chess together and talk; in the course of their conversation Ralph begins to speak about his relationship with Lisa, unaware that he is talking to Lisa's husband. Ralph begins to see Peter as a friend, but Peter is obsessed with vengeance against the man who has cuckolded him. And then comes the twist. (I won't say what it is). The film was directed by Sir Richard Eyre, perhaps best known in British as a theatrical director, but it does not have the stagey, claustrophobic feel of certain films made by directors whose primary work has been in the theatre. It is, however, worth mentioning that Sir Richard also worked on the BBC series "Play for Today" in the seventies and eighties, as "The Other Man" has something of the intimate feel of a television play- in fact it often seems closer to that genre than it does to the cinematic feature which it ostensibly is. That remark is not intended as a putdown. The television play was a fine dramatic and literary genre in its own right, and it was a sad day for British drama when in 1985 the BBC scrapped "Play for Today", and reduced the role of one-off plays in its output, in order to concentrate more on soap operas and serials. (Channel 4 did to some extent try to cover the gap in the one-off market with its "Film on 4" series, but there is a difference between a television play and a made-for-television film)Advocating the return of "Play for Today", or something like it, to British television screens, the commentator and newspaper columnist Jan Moir wrote "A good piece of drama looks at the human condition, and tells us something we should know about ourselves," and this I think is what "The Other Man" does. It is not really the greatest film of its three major stars, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Antonio Banderas, all of whim have given better performances than they do here, especially Neeson ("Schindler's List", "Nell", "K-19 The Widowmaker").and Linney ("The Truman Show", "The House of Mirth"), and the twist ending can seem like a bit of a gimmick. Yet I think that it works as a psychological drama, one that explores some of the darker areas of the human psyche such as jealousy and the desire for revenge, but one which ends on a note of hope and reconciliation. The dark nature of the emotions involved is emphasised by Eyre's restricted palette, dominated by browns and greys, giving the film a sombre, autumnal feel. It is in some ways a very modern film, with that quintessentially modern invention, the computer, central to the plot, but it is also one that explores the timeless aspects of human nature. A play for today. 6/10

"The Other Man" is so incredibly boring, I can't even believe I sat through the whole thing. I guess the only reason I did was because I hoped it would get better, but it never did.I would highly recommend avoiding this movie. I can't even begin to explain how disappointed I was in it. I mean, I didn't think it would be the kind of flick to win an Academy Award or anything, but I thought it would at least be a solidly written story, but it wasn't...and it shows! I have been a little disappointed in what I've been seeing from Liam Neeson lately...I didn't like this movie, and I didn't like "Unknown" either. I hope he starts picking scripts a little bit better before I start having seconds thoughts about seeing his movies.He's a great actor, but he's just not been picking the best scripts lately, which is weird because normally his movies are pretty damn good! Anyway, in conclusion, I'd say avoid this movie. It's a real letdown. Liam's usually an effective actor, but this script just holds him back from really being able to do anything.