I wanted to like this, I like the two leads and admire many of their performances, but this movie never sat easily with me - or believably.
I can take Anthony Hopkins as a black who looks remarkably white, but I could not take the slippage of his accent and how very unlike him the young Coleman Silk, played by Wentworth Miller, was. Though Wentworth Miller's performance was just about terrific.
I found the love scenes between Hopkins and Kidman contrived and was convinced more than a few times that she was using a body double, as was he. And you know you're in trouble at a movie when you are speculating on such matters. The story has failed to grip you as it should.
Several key elements in the script were abandoned - the theme of Coleman becoming Jewish, that surely deserved five minutes and the theme of his colleague on faculty discovering his affair with the janitor Faunia, played by Kidman. Which brings me to Kidman playing so called "white trash". White trash she never was, she came from a wealthy family whom I would assume were not white trash so her early grounding had a degree of culture and privilege. Running away from home at 14 would not have removed this from her.
Gary Sinise was wonderful as the constant second banana, as always.
Threaded as the narrator throughout the movie. Ed Harris has a small but significant part as the ex-husband, but again we are never shown scenes of a marriage between him and Nicole and their children.
Nicole also failed to grab me in what should have been a key scene about her children and a speech by one of Coleman's colleagues near the end of the movie spiked my credibility meter the wrong way.
6 out of 10. Nicole was woefully miscast here.
I can take Anthony Hopkins as a black who looks remarkably white, but I could not take the slippage of his accent and how very unlike him the young Coleman Silk, played by Wentworth Miller, was. Though Wentworth Miller's performance was just about terrific.
I found the love scenes between Hopkins and Kidman contrived and was convinced more than a few times that she was using a body double, as was he. And you know you're in trouble at a movie when you are speculating on such matters. The story has failed to grip you as it should.
Several key elements in the script were abandoned - the theme of Coleman becoming Jewish, that surely deserved five minutes and the theme of his colleague on faculty discovering his affair with the janitor Faunia, played by Kidman. Which brings me to Kidman playing so called "white trash". White trash she never was, she came from a wealthy family whom I would assume were not white trash so her early grounding had a degree of culture and privilege. Running away from home at 14 would not have removed this from her.
Gary Sinise was wonderful as the constant second banana, as always.
Threaded as the narrator throughout the movie. Ed Harris has a small but significant part as the ex-husband, but again we are never shown scenes of a marriage between him and Nicole and their children.
Nicole also failed to grab me in what should have been a key scene about her children and a speech by one of Coleman's colleagues near the end of the movie spiked my credibility meter the wrong way.
6 out of 10. Nicole was woefully miscast here.