Antena 3 Films, Mount Santa Fe,
Charlie Cox, Wes Bentley, Dougray Scott, Unax Ugalde, Olga Kurylenko, Pablo Lapadula, Golshifteh Farahani, Rusty Lemorande, Ana Torrent
The story of a young journalist, investigating the life of Josemaria (Charlie Cox) who is a candidate for sainthood. JoseMaria was involved in the Spanish Civil war, who had a friend, Manalo (Wes Bentley) who is the journalists own estranged father who is in bad health and on his deathbed. As he learns more about the terrible times his father had, and the tough choices he had to make, the story becomes about forgiveness most of all.
This is an epic film. It tells three stories, really, the modern story of gradual understanding and forgiveness of the journalist for his father. The story of his father, and the hard choices he had to make, and the story of Josemaria and what he did. Manalo and Josemaria were childhood friends whose lives went in different directions, yet still touched each other in numerous ways as they went through the horrors of the civil war. The movie is very big, and the photography is stunning. But the story is a bit too confusing and misses the mark, in my opinion. Some historians, who are scholars on the time period, loved it. For me though, it was kind of a confusing mess. I guess the problem is that I didn’t identify with the story, and therefore didn’t really get caught up in it. I found it to be rather boring and lost interest frequently.
It’s been a bad couple weeks with movies that were disappointing. It’s funny how that seems to go in cycles. We had a period of great historical dramas for a while, and suddenly several that I really didn’t care for. This is one that I felt was a waste of time for me to watch, as I just was simply not interested. I felt disappointed in this film, and didn’t think it was worth the effort. Another dud.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
