Involves two mysteries -- one it gives away and the other featuring such badly drawn characters that its outcome hardly matters.
Comment
11/01/02
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The Weight of Water (2002)
32
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:62
Fresh:20
Rotten:42
Average Rating:5.1/10
Consensus: The story is too muddled to build any interest.
Theatrical Release:Nov 1, 2002 Limited
Synopsis: Two stories unravel simultaneously in this dark and suspenseful film. The first story, set in the present day, concerns a photographer, Jean (Catherine McCormack). She is working on an article for... [More]
Starring: Elizabeth Hurley, Catherine McCormack, Sean Penn, Sarah Polley
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
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Reviews for The Weight of Water
Top Critic[Bigelow] provides the standard, repressive Victorian melodrama in the old story, while the newer one is merely afloat until a storm rolls in as climax.
11/01/02
The action switches between past and present, but the material link is too tenuous to anchor the emotional connections that purport to span a 125-year divide.
11/01/02
Water's story eventually becomes so murky, and the drama so heavy-handed, this piece of ship simply sinks.
11/01/02
A boring, pretentious muddle that uses a sensational, real-life 19th-Century crime as a metaphor for -- well, I'm not exactly sure what -- and has all the dramatic weight of a raindrop.
11/01/02
Top CriticThe actors are splendid, especially Sarah Polley and Sean Penn, but we never feel confident that these two plots fit together, belong together, or work together.
11/01/02
Top CriticWhether our action-and-popcorn obsessed culture will embrace this engaging and literate psychodrama isn't much of a mystery, unfortunately.
11/01/02
Bigelow may produce broad, middling big-budget fare when (working for) a studio...But left to her own devices, she's capable of creating fine layers of intimacy and intensity.
11/01/02
If the film fails to fulfill its own ambitious goals, it nonetheless sustains interest during the long build-up of expository material.
10/31/02
Kathryn Bigelow's attractive film version of Anita Shreve's novel is a gripping plunge but a remote one, suffering from the weight of one too many inexpressible thoughts.
10/31/02
Top CriticThe modern-day characters are nowhere near as vivid as the 19th-century ones.
10/31/02
When the movie finally collapses on itself late in the game, it leaves you in the frustrating position of having to pick up its scattered pieces and assemble them as best you can.
10/31/02
Top CriticNo matter how deep her hurt, Jean and her insecurities make for an impoverished counterpoint to the tragedy of a woman imprisoned by history as well as by madness.
10/31/02
From the diary of Kathryn Bigelow - "Maybe this whole project was some subconscious effort to take shots at the jackasses in my life."
10/31/02
Heavy-handed exercise in time-vaulting literary pretension.
10/31/02
A very literary drama that uses two intertwined stories to explore jealousy as a dangerous little mutant that sometimes is life-threatening.
10/31/02
Bigelow directs this screen version of Anita Shreve's complex novel with polish and a flair for the melodramatic.
10/31/02
Top CriticLovingly detailed but unaccountably clumsy, obviously ambitious, and unfortunately chintzy.
10/29/02
Top CriticBigelow is so intent upon making a non-exploitative movie that she de-sensationalizes the film to the point where it loses all energy.
10/29/02
Top CriticIntriguing and beautiful film, but those of you who read the book are likely to be disappointed.
10/29/02
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