Hereafter
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Warner Bros. Pictures
Some say Clint Eastwood has reached the end of his game, that it’s time for the great director to step aside and hand over the camera. After seeing Eastwood’s newest film, Hereafter, I can only say I agree 100 per cent.
Not to say the movie was awful — it had some brilliant “Eastwood flair,” his trademark camera angles, picturesque shots and superb acting — but it feels like Eastwood sort of fell asleep behind the camera, then, waking up halfway through, remembered “Oh right! I’m shooting a movie.”
Hereafter revolves around three —albeit tenuously — interwoven plots featuring characters dealing with the “hereafter,” or the afterlife.
Matt Damon plays a reluctant psychic who can access the “hereafter” and communicate with those who have passed on. He gives up this lifestyle, opting for a simpler life, when he can’t handle the stress of knowing people’s intimate family secrets.
The only thing that would make this story more cliché would be if you substituted the word “psychic” for “con man.”
Renowned French movie star Cécile de France plays a rich, socialite television journalist who has an encounter with the afterlife when she is knocked unconscious and nearly dies in a tsunami while in Thailand.
The final story revolves around twin Cockney boys and their drug-addicted mother.
When one of the boys is killed in a car accident, his brother, now living in foster care, searches for a clairvoyant to talk to his deceased twin.
After two grueling hours, the stories finally intersect in England, where each character ends up almost accidentally.
There is no real resolution, nor is there really a story — just three premises. This lack of story was extremely evident when the audience began to wonder, at the hour and half mark, whether anything was actually going to happen.
The acting was marvelous, and was perhaps the movie’s strongest point, but the writing was lacking — the story seemed entirely absent.
Eastwood needs to either step up his game and hire a new writer (as who knows how many movies he has left in him) or maybe just retire, because let’s be frank: this barely-held-together, two-hour drudge was no Million Dollar Baby.