Wonderfully offbeat film!

Excellent, a Must See

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

What's really going on in this time-twisting, pseudo-philosophical urban crime parable that wants to be 'Tarantino does Run, Lola, Run' so badly it hurts? Your guess is as good as mine. Essentially, the Vantage Point-style (I won't invite the comparison to the infinitely superior Rashômon) overlapping story lines all revolve around the theft of the Shroud of Turin (Jesus' burial cloth) from the Vatican. The FBI(?) agents pursuing it (Christian Slater & Nicky Whelan) stumble across a bundle of eccentric characters, including the manic pixie dream girl bike messenger obliviously transporting it (Q'orianka Kilcher), a vengeful thug out for blood (Anthony Anderson), a pair of philosophical homeless men (Christopher Walken and In Bruges' Jordan Prentice), and a teen thieving his brother's baby food (Devon Gearhart)... all of whose lives are subtly, positively altered by the presence of Few (Tione Johnson), who comes with her own murky theological connotations. Muscling through the ensuing brain hurt to try to piece together the film isn't as much Few as 'Phew!' It sounds interesting enough on paper, and Marucci's confidently stylized filmmaking lends some slick intersections of soundtrack and cinematography (the highlight is Walken fantasizing a couple of botched robberies, shot like a TV crime bulletin), as well as alarmingly non-sequitur bursts of startling violence. The film's script, however, is madder than a sack full of ferrets, and more concerned with sounding hip at all costs (it doesn't) than answering any of the film's logistical questions (it still doesn't), let alone much sense of theme or cohesion. That said, it's not an outright unpleasant watch, and Marucci gets good use out of his grimy New Orleans locations, with some flashy aerial establishing shots of the city modeled after Spike Lee's bombastic Do The Right Thing… again, just not as good.The ensemble cast are all sturdy work but largely unremarkable. Slater's police procedural vignette is the most disappointing, too mired in unclear context and snarling overacting to generate much excitement. The noteworthy exceptions are the adorably flighty Kilcher and magnetically calm Johnson, both reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai characters. Then there's the incomparable Walken, garbed like a homeless Silent Bob, and sporting a "Clone Jesus" t-shirt. He works wonders with his hepcat dialogue, infusing his oddball conspiracy theorist with more riveting conviction and subtle pathos than the material warrants.At its best moments, The Power of Few is lively, pleasantly beguiling, and even threatens to raise some interesting questions about fate, spirituality, and so on. Still, Marucci's monolithic dialogue and overcomplicated, under-explained plot are so alienating that it's nigh impossible to connect with any of the characters or scenarios for more than fleeting moments. You certainly can't fault Marucci for taking chances, but with a film that feels overlong at only 96 minutes, leaving the viewer still scrabbling for a point at its conclusion, the film's real power is how little it manages to accomplish with so much going on.-5.5/10

Why would a talented and seasoned actor such as the 70 year old Christopher Walken agree to star in a movie directed and written by someone like Leone Marucci who has not had any proved body of work and/or track record to speak of? Why would a first rate action star such as Christian Slater also be convinced to join the cast? I can only surmise that they read the script and shared a common vision that with the writer/director Leone Marucci they could somehow recreate the powerful cinema experience of 2004's Crash.Unfortunately this movie was a mad scramble of vignettes that I found to be boring and lacking any significant artistic value. From my own point of view, it would appear that the movie was originally filmed in the proper sequence of events, then spliced in to 3-5 minute intervals, thrown in to a covered box, shaken thoroughly, then re-spliced, in an effort to add some artistic value(?) and then additional alternating scenes of the "what if the power of few intervened" were filmed, and also thrown in to the covered box, re-spliced in to the film, and the revealing final scenes were then completed to somehow magically complete the writer/directors tapestry (Leone Marucci would probably say tapestry, and I would say travesty).I am a big fan of Christopher Walken's work and a seasonal fan of Christian Slater. Both were disappointing in the roles they were asked to play, and I am sure that even they would agree that the final result was not what they were expecting.Don't waste your time with this director's attempt to copy the 2006 Best Picture Oscar success of the 2004 movie Crash (starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton 'et al), instead pick up the movie Crash, and even if you have already seen it, it is a much better watch a second time around, than "The Power Of Few" was for me to watch the first time (and last time) I watched it.

One of those circling stories destined to connect different characters from different situations, surrounded by strange events where the small of movements might cause the butterfly effect, changing their lives forever. The hyperlink is a terrific formula when presented in many films but it only works with brilliancy when the speech and the message are truly important, when the cast is fantastic, and when all the elements put together makes total sense, even in its wildest absurdity. Altman, Iñarritú, P.T. Anderson and many others have tasted from this source and made remarkable masterpieces with the hyperlink. "The Power of Few" goes to show that the power of making such movies is really in the hands of few. The cast was good, the situations given to the characters went from relatively good to miserably dull. The message at the ending almost saves the film, after many bumps and pointless conversations and scenes.It revolves around the robbery of the decade happened in Vatican (plot given so little detail and almost irrelevant to the rest of the movie) and a crime drama involving drug dealers, inexperienced thieves, a delivery messenger, two hobos, some secret agents and one smart kid. They're all gathered in one impactant moment, played repeated times each time new characters are introduced in the plot, very similar to the presentation given in "Vantage Point". That's when the movie started to become predictable. Those encounters always to revolve around deaths, accidents and unbelievable schemes. There's no time to care for the characters because they're so brief on the screen, so when they start to get killed, you don't feel anything for them. I only liked the kid (Devon Gearhart) who was trying to rob a drugstore to get medicine for his young brother. All the others were plain annoying, slowing down the movie with their gibberish and small talk. Respect and importance could be given to this project if treated as a serious drama instead of an action flick filled of thrilling moments with a defining purpose only given in the ending. By that time it's so shallow, pretense and hollow. It tries to show how powerful we are (or can be) in moments of weakness and despair, and how everything changes with just one small step, one small action, one mistake. The plot twist comes when it finally uses a retroactive mode to show how things could be for those characters. The tragedy goes off, the good possibilities walks in. So simplistic that hurts. To name a similar (and better) experience I suggest "Blind Chance" (1981), which focus on a man whose life is presented three times to us, with one turning point repeated to us several times, altering a few things. It was a great philosophical film about how small things can affect everyone's lives and how sometimes there's no greater change on the other side, it all leads to catastrophe. Comparing both films is ridiculous since it's not the same kind of audiences who watch them, but I insist you to watch it, and skip "The Power of Few".To quote the smart kid, this is about biting your cheek really hard and having to live with the pain. There's no turning back, you wish it didn't happen but now you're gonna have to live with it. Yes, the pain of having seen this and endure the great Christopher Walken acting in a movie that doesn't deserve his talent. 4/10

"Have you ever bit the inside of your cheek?" A stolen religious artifact, a baby who needs medicine, a delivery driver who meets a man on the run from a gang, two agents looking for someone and two homeless men all become connected in one tragic event. This is the kind of movie where a series of events connect groups of people that otherwise have nothing in common. This one event is shown from everyone's point of view and how one person can change everything. I love movies like this. Movies that show the same event from many different perspectives. No movie has done it better then Rashomon but there have been many attempts since then. Most recently movies like Crash, 11:14 and Vantage Point have all used this style of filmmaking. I have enjoyed all those movies and I enjoyed this one as well. The only problem I had with this one is that some of the stories went on a little long and started to slow the movie down, but overall the movie was enjoyable and really keeps you watching and sucked in. Overall, a fun movie done in a type of style that I really love, which may skew my opinion but I think it's very much worth watching. I give it a B.