John Debono (johnd62)

You know what is the worst part of being the reining king of indie cinema? That when you do have your occasional misstep it becomes all the more disappointing because you can see what they are trying to do but just simply does not work. This is the case of Jim Jarmusch's "The Limits of Control", a visually stunning

It is interesting to watch how stories can change depending on the director's style.
In this case director Tony Scott turned a quieter intense thriller into a balls-out action film that only Scott can deliver. Which just happens to be both one of the film's strong points as well as its biggest flaw. Yes it is quite distinctive from the 1974 film but it is also more or less the exact same film from any other Tony Scott in the last decade. All flaws and total disinterest in logic in place.
Luckily that means all the strongest points of Tony Scott's film, in particular the cast. With his fourth film with Scott, Denzel Washington is once again solid as the lead. Providing a quiet strength and flawed everyman needed for the character and never being attention to the his star power. It just goes to show how strong he really is as an actor.
Now on the polar opposite of subtle, John Travolta dials his performance up to 11 and loves every second of it. Its great to see Travolta back in "Face/Off" mode and is actually the funniest time I've had at a Travolta film in a long time.
Both actors provide great sense of conflict and find an equal level realism and crazy fun and for a solid 2/3s of the film it keeps that balance.
Then comes the ending, which throws out just about everything that was good about this film out of the window and just becomes an bombardment of annoying cuts, frantic camera work and cars crashing all over the place, as though I was re-living my driver's test all over again. Which is a shame because Scott has a really great story here but he just can't stay still and let the story tell itself.
So what your left with is a solid rental and a fun popcorn film but nothing near as great as the first film.

I have yet to see a film that is this close to perfection, that it's taken me 2 days after seeing the film before I could write a proper review. While my friend told me that I had to think how great it would be multiple that by a million then multiple it again by a million and it's about as close as you can get to this masterpiece. He's a 100% right. I'll start by stating the obvious Daniel Day-Lewis is a God among actors. He's not just acting like Daniel Plalnview he IS Daniel Plainview. He's just flat out scary as hell (He makes Anton Chuirgugh look like George Bailey) but also makes us understand why he does what he does. In a year of great performances Day-Lewis is hands down the most deserving of the best actor oscar. Now that shouldn't be a surprise to any film lovers but what is surprising is that the entire cast is at Day Lewis' level. Paul Dano proves he's one of the future greats with an equally dark and scary performance and the newcomer Dillon Freasier gives just as strong a performance as Day-Lewis (That says a lot since he plays his 8 year old son H.W Plainview.). It's the best performance by a young actor I've seen. P.T Anderson oh dear God I can't pit into words how f*cking brilliant you are. I expected to love this film but never did I think you would top my list of favorite films. (Yes better then Godfather, Raging Bull and Do The Right Thing.) With it great camera work, set design, score (Radio Head's Johnny Green can do no wrong) screenplay, acting and direction (I couldn't even keep my eyes off it during the first 20 minutes where no one talked!). All that's left to say is thank God in a year of Norbit and Wild Hogs we have you.

At first I was wondering if there was really a point of writing another review for this masterpiece because what can I really add to this film's universal praise. #1 on IMDB, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and #2 of the AFI's greatest films of all time list. So just quite simply it's a masterpiece. There's no other way to put it and a million careers own a great amount to Francis Ford Coppola.