Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Disturbing yet enthralling

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This is divided into sections each about an aphorism. Lawyer Troy (Matthew McConaughey) is celebrating a win at a bar with his colleagues. Then he hits a pedestrian and decides to drive off. Walker (John Turturro) is a physics professor who is cheating on his wife Patricia (Amy Irving) and she suspects him. Beatrice (Clea DuVall) is a maid but her sweet blissful nature is shaken after getting run over by Troy. Gene (Alan Arkin) is a cynical insurance claims manager with family problems and bitter at his happy co-worker.There are interesting stories and good performances. The cast is amazing. It aspires to be philosophically deep and meaningful. The meandering nature of the story telling leaves me wondering if the movie is actually saying anything. The rotating characters do not allow the tension to build. It needs to rebuild every 15 minutes. I wonder if the movie would be a lot better following one character and dropping the philosophical pretense.

Recap: A few people in New York with their own trouble seem to have nothing in common but does think about the same questions. Does luck exist? What is fate? And foremost: What is happiness and how do I get it? By some chance encounters these people meet and their life intertwines, and unknown to themselves they are integral in the other's lives. Cause and effectComments: A very odd movie. The pace of the story is slow and it gets quite deep sometimes. It's philosophical and trivial at the same time, and to put the dot over the I, not told in chronological order. Watching this I felt a little conflicted. It was too slow to keep my interest totally and I started lose concentration, thinking about something else to do while watching. But at the same time it was intriguing enough that I couldn't pull myself from the screen. It was an odd feeling.The thing that kept me in the end was the out of sequence order of the scenes and how the people met and the impact they had on each other. My interest wasn't so much in the story that was told, but more in solving the puzzle of what happened when and to what effect.It's a different movie, certainly not one of the main stream pictures. Nice to see then that it attracted some main stream star names, most notably Matthew McConaughey, but also Clea DuVall, John Turturro and Alan Arkin. Good performances all around, and that was important as the story depends on each one of them to be believable in their own little misery. If one of them would have stepped out of line everything would have crumbled.This is a movie to watch if you want something else, something new compared to the box office hit movies. A movie that you need to work a little for the entertainment and not be spoon fed all the way. Something to watch when you are alert and perhaps with company that you can discuss with during and afterwards. If you don't like movies like that, stay away.6/10

If it weren't for the fact that I had company whilst watching this drivel I would have given up on it after 20 minutes. It is dire. if there is a message then I really can't be bothered to find one. The acting is stiff. The script is plain awful. The point of the movie - God knows I really don't. I find that most movies that deal with really important life issues always engage humour - the humour breaks the tension that inevitably builds. This movie neither creates tension nor provides any relief from the humdrum misery it portrays. Not a smile to be found - was everyone on Prosac? Avoid like the plague. Find something better to watch.

It's always pleasing to unexpectedly stumble across an intelligent and thought-provoking film such as this. Essentially a study on both the fickle nature of happiness and our (mis)understanding of it, and of the random manner in which complete strangers can alter the path of a person's life with neither being aware of the fact, 13 Conversations interweaves the tales of a handful of characters with deceptive ease and no little skill. Not only does the film smoothly pull all the strands together, it also does so by telling a tale that is not chronologically linear, but which overlaps in the same way that its characters' lives overlaps.Perhaps the only flaw is that a disproportionate amount of screen time is given to Alan Arkin's character at a cost to the others. John Turturro's professor and Matthew McConnaughy's yuppie lawyer in particular seem to be the casualties of this, but it has to be said that Arkin gives a masterful performance and carries his part of the film with ease. The dialogue is sometimes a little too clever for its own good – we get a sense of people making speeches to each other rather than holding conversations on occasion – but, having said that, what the characters have to see is always interesting and absorbing. A very good film, worthy of its high rating.