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3 Needles (2006)

tomatometer

35

Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 37
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 24

In getting its message about the AIDS epidemic across, the film unfortunately sacrifices story and character.

25

Average Rating: 4.7/10
Critic Reviews: 16
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 12

In getting its message about the AIDS epidemic across, the film unfortunately sacrifices story and character.

audience

66

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 2,918

My Rating

Movie Info

Three stories, which offer differing perspectives on the AIDS pandemic, are featured in this anthology-drama. Sister Clara (Chloë Sevigny) is a young nun who is working with two, more experienced, missionaries (Olympia Dukakis and Sandra Oh) in a village along the African coast. Sister Clara finds herself struggling against ignorance and misinformation among the natives, but discovers she can only accomplish so much through traditional means and is forced to make a great personal sacrifice for

R,

Drama

Apr 3, 2007

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All Critics (38) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (13) | Rotten (25) | DVD (4)

If nothing else, [director Thom] Fitzgerald has demonstrated how huge a challenge the AIDS epidemic is on a worldwide scale, and how it will take a concerted, intelligent effort to solve it. It'll take a lot more than throwing money around.

December 1, 2006 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Only the African story feels complete, while the Chinese story is gloomily hopeless and the Montreal story is just a bad idea. 3 Needles is not about AIDS; it's about the exploitation of it.

December 1, 2006 Full Review Source: New York Daily News
New York Daily News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Broad in scope and at times visually stunning, [director Thom] Fitzgerald's project is ambitious but lacks cohesion.

December 1, 2006 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's hard to know what exactly the movie means with a lot of the choices it makes, even if, ultimately, it means well.

December 1, 2006 Full Review Source: Boston Globe
Boston Globe
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Though not as coherent as it might be, 3 Needles, with its stunning cinematography by Thomas M. Harting, is never less than engaging and suggests powerfully the myriad reasons why AIDS, after a quarter of a century, remains so difficult to combat.

November 30, 2006 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Had it taken a more hard-headed approach, 3 Needles might have been to the AIDS epidemic what Traffic was to the drug trade.

November 30, 2006
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

As a movie with an important message, 3 Needles is an idiotic waste of time.

May 27, 2007 Full Review Source: DVDTalk.com
DVDTalk.com

great performances and the heartbreaking dilemmas

April 17, 2007 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com
Filmcritic.com

A marginally involving dramatization of how peopledeal with AIDS in 3 separate cultures

December 22, 2006 Full Review Source: Compuserve
Compuserve

Making serious points about serious issues, the film underscores repeatedly the need for personal and official vigilance concerning "the virus,"

December 21, 2006 Full Review Source: PopMatters
PopMatters

3 Needles is a case of diminishing returns with the first story of blood running in China the best and the last, set in Africa, the least compelling.

December 3, 2006 Full Review Source: Reeling Reviews
Reeling Reviews

Three riveting dramas about the AIDS crisis set in South Africa, China, and Canada that open our eyes and our hearts to victims of this dread disease.

December 3, 2006 Full Review Source: Spirituality and Practice
Spirituality and Practice

The situations are contrived, the ironies are cheap, and the dialogue is overly blunt.

December 2, 2006 Full Review Source: AV Club
AV Club

Demonstrates that the transmission of HIV has become an uncontrollable global pandemic that feeds on poverty and recognizes no sexual, national or religious borders.

December 1, 2006 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | Comment (1)
TV Guide's Movie Guide

3 Needles is difficult to take at times, but it ultimately rewards those viewers willing to meet its challenges.

December 1, 2006
Reel.com

3 Needles, Thom Fitzgerald's globe-spanning investigation of the effects of AIDS, may ultimately be a call to unity, but there's an extreme amount of despair and misery before we get to hear that trumpet blare.

December 1, 2006 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Daily News
Los Angeles Daily News

Nothing is as irritating as watching a film which is little more than an exercise of ego; worse is watching one that is about as discrete in its purpose as a missionary in Africa.

December 1, 2006 Full Review Source: Film Journal International
Film Journal International

It's gorgeously filmed, but its character logic very rarely makes any sense.

November 30, 2006 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid
Combustible Celluloid

Audience Reviews for 3 Needles

[font=Century Gothic]A few years previously, writer-director Thom Fitzgerald made a film, "The Event," about a man dying of AIDS in New York City. With his latest film, "3 Needles," he brings a global perspective to the edidemic in three segments:[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]"The Fortitude of the Buddha" - In southern China, Jin(Lucy Liu), a very pregnant blood smuggler, sets up a blood donation unit in a village to pay locals $5 apiece for their blood. A poor farmer, Tong Sam(Tanabadee Chokpikultong), is too sick to give but he volunteers his 11-year old daughter, Qi(Yotaka Cheukaew), instead.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]"The Passion of the Christ" - In Montreal, a porn star, Denys(Shawn Ashmore), is faking his HIV blood tests with his invalid father's(Aubert Pallascio) blood. Eventually his ruse is discovered.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]"The Innocence of the Pagans" - In Africa, three nuns(Olympia Dukakis, Sandra Oh and Chloe Sevigny) arrive not to care for the large amount people suffering from AIDS, but to proselytize.(Thus, explaining why missionaries are some of my least favorite people.)[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]"3 Needles" is an ambitious movie that is occasionally powerful and beautiful. Through an understated style with little dialogue, the movie tells three stories that do a good job of showing how AIDS can flourish through self-interest and exploitation but also a way of fighting it with activists united on a global scale. In the end, the people of the world need to communicate better with each other to improve the world we live in.[/font]
December 1, 2007
Harlequin68
Walter M.

Super Reviewer

My review back in 2007: Although this movie is filled with good actors, it falls very short of a captivating, inspiring, or intelligent story on the AIDS crisis.

I was not fan's of any of these actors or the director, but due to the story subject I was willing to give it a try. The best story was the intial full story ripped from the headlines about AIDS being passed onto innocent Chinese rural citizens. What I was surprised at was that they do not touch on the cover up.

After an initial sad, but very truthful story the movie goes quickly downhill from there. The second story is an idiotic and selfish story, that puts in a twist, but doesn't pay off and only is weird. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters in that second story.

The third story show's the writer and director's total misunderstanding of Catholic theology, nuns, and their views. Then essentially makes a saint out of a Nun who pimps herself out to a rich western business man for the sake of the dying AID's children to make her out as some saint. It ends up being a sad and idiotic moral to a very real crisis in Africa.

This story is not like Babel other than being a losely connected story in various countries. Babel shockingly showed human connection through pain, but this story instead shows nothing of the sort. Instead, it uses a very real crises as a backdrop to some interesting story telling and outright mischaracterization of a faith and promotion of some Unitarian feel good afterschool hogwash.
March 13, 2011
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