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3 Needles (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:15
Fresh:3
Rotten:12
Average Rating:4.5/10
Consensus: In getting its message about the AIDS epidemic across, the film unfortunately sacrifices story and character.
Theatrical Release:Dec 1, 2006 Limited
Synopsis: Canadian writer-director Thom Fitzgerald's sweeping 3 NEEDLES journeys across several continents to show just how widespread HIV/AIDS has become in our modern world. Three distinct stories are... Canadian writer-director Thom Fitzgerald's sweeping 3 NEEDLES journeys across several continents to show just how widespread HIV/AIDS has become in our modern world. Three distinct stories are loosely linked by the narration of Olympia Dukakis, whose character appears in the film's final sequence. In the first, Lucy Liu is a pregnant Chinese woman who makes her living as a blood smuggler. Things turn sour when several donors begin to get sick and die. The second story, set in Montreal, follows a porn actor (Shawn Ashmore) who fakes his blood tests in order to keep working in the industry. But when his scheme is exposed, he is shamed and humiliated. His heartbroken mother (Stockard Channing) takes out an insurance policy and embarks on a darkly comic mission to contract the HIV virus as well. South Africa is the setting for the final tale, where three nuns (Chloe Sevigny, Sandra Oh, and Dukakis) have arrived to help out in the community. But in order to get a local plantation owner to assist one of her patients, Sevigny's character must make the most shameful sacrifice of all. 3 NEEDLES is an ambitious drama featuring beautiful cinematography by Tom Harting. Fitzgerald boldly eschews a more traditional tonal approach by combining seemingly disparate elements of black comedy, graphic content, and straight drama. The result is a broad, expansive commentary on a genuinely tragic situation that has no end in sight. [More]
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Lucy Liu, Stockard Channing, Olympia Dukakis
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Lucy Liu, Stockard Channing, Olympia Dukakis, Chloe Sevigny, Sandra Oh, Ian Roberts, Gary Farmer, Sook-Yin Lee
Director: Thom Fitzgerald
Director: Thom Fitzgerald
Producer: Thom Fitzgerald
Composer: Christophe Beck, Trevor Morris
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Reviews for 3 Needles
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.
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.
Broad in scope and at times visually stunning, [director Thom] Fitzgerald's project is ambitious but lacks cohesion.
It's hard to know what exactly the movie means with a lot of the choices it makes, even if, ultimately, it means well.
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.
Had it taken a more hard-headed approach, 3 Needles might have been to the AIDS epidemic what Traffic was to the drug trade.
It sometimes produces moments of unexpected power. It also produces a bizarre and fatally uneven movie, veering from black comedy to maudlin religiosity, which seems to have been made in total defiance of both narrative conventions and emotional logic.
By the time the movie returned to Africa, it had lost me despite its talented cast and its noble intentions.
The results can be gripping, but also difficult to follow in some places -- and difficult to swallow in others.
Sprawling from Montreal to South Africa to China, Thom Fitzgerald's 3 Needles is a great discussion tool for World AIDS Awareness Day that never achieves coherent shape as a three-paneled drama.
The film is unfocussed and listless. Fitzgerald has the ideas; what he needs more than anything is a ruthless editor.
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