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*** of ****
Rated: R
Length: ~110 minutes
Writer & Director: Ed Burns
Cast:
Edward Burns: Tommy
Heather Graham: Annie
Stanley Tucci: Griffin
David Krumholtz: Ben
Brittany Murphy: Ashley
Rosario Dawson: Maria
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Plot overview:
Three men and three women are intertwined in romantic affairs of separated love, sex, and friendship. The film is mostly narrative, but has occasional side walk documentary interviews that serve to further define the character's motivations.
Review:
The situations are conspicuously overdone to drive the underlying story, but the side walk interviews do succeed in neutralizing this potentially myopic trap. Writer/Director Burns illustrates the concept of friendship separated form love which is separated from sex. He shows how everything is incomplete and even hollow if those three critical elements of a relationship are way out of balance. A sufficient background is developed for the characters to understand their motivations and what led their lives to this point, but there is a reliance on the audience's own knowledge to complete the concept which may make this movie suite the 25 and over crowd. The web of deceit is spun into a fable where the guilty learn their lessons as they cause the innocent fall from grace. The movie is nearly two hours long, and does feel a little slow, but Burns put in what needs to be there to make his view of neo-post-love sexual relations work. Stanley Tucci had the busiest role as the two timing dentist with his affair on the side. Even his affair is knocked aside when it is inconvenient. Heather Graham finally gets to display her ability to act. She effectively takes her character through the biggest transformation in the story which could be an allegory for modern society's excuse for love. This will feel slow, but the purpose of that will become more apparent in the end.