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Actors:

Colin Farrell
Hayley Atwell
Ewan McGregor
Mark Umbers
Tom Wilkinson
Andrew Howard

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Two brothers are very bad with handling money. Someone else suggests that they turn to crime to solve their financial woes which causes the two brothers to hate each other.

08/21/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

I Dreamt of a better film

This monotonous thriller, the latest from Woody Allen, clings to the shifty, mostly convincing portrayals of McGregor and Farrell as two brothers caught in a bad situation; it's almost too similar to Sidney Lumet's recent Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and too reminiscent of Allen's own Match Point, though it has less style, no atmosphere, no thrills and a much too abrupt ending. A genre exercise with no guts by a master filmmaker who's in way over his head. Final Grade: C-

Rating of
2/4 

08/09/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Very Disappointing

I really wanted to like this film because everyone’s been saying that Woody Allen has lost his touch. I simply don’t believe such statements because once a great director is always a great director. Nonetheless, I think this is one of his weakest recent pictures because it was just so dull and the material felt recycled. With his masterful modern film “Match Point” that has the same premise and moral conundrums, there is absolutely no need to go that path again. Therefore, “Cassandra’s Dream” was unnecessary and felt more like a nightmare; for a film that’s about an hour and fifty-minutes, it felt much, much longer. I really like Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell but the characters they played made one stupid decision after another, not to mention they were difficult to empathize with becau...

Rating of
2/4 

01/25/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Far from Allen's best, but enjoyable enough

Much like MATCH POINT, there is a crime involved and the psychological complications that result. But where the inadequacies in planning and production of the act were tantalizing in the former film, here they just feel like carelessness. Even the set-up of the plot has glaringly obvious complications. But if the viewer is willing to accept these faults, the film becomes much more enjoyable. After all, the point of the film appears to be irony (the word itself is muttered many times), maybe it’s all part of Allen’s master plan. Indeed, so many integral plot points veer between laziness in writing and execution and apparent intentional stupidity. Yet as the film winds down to its close, it becomes more focused on family (the other big point of the film) and it is all the better for it. The...

Rating of
2/4 

01/18/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

What Schemes Are Made Of

A lot of people will see this movie for the "hot" factor of Ewan or Colin. And in fact, the acting in the beginning of the movie was kind of boring and unconvincing. However, Tom Wilkinson's appearance into the movie livened things up. I really am not fond of Hayley Atwell. Woody Allen's taste in women seems to have changed. Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton and even more obscure Janet Margolin were much classier. His female characters used to have a brain and weren't simply emotional or using their gender to get what they want out of men.

However, the story is about the brothers. And the conflict is strong. And the two main leads are capable. It was like a poor man's Match Point. It is definitely not going to be successful and definitely not going to be for everyone. But give it a shot if you...

Rating of
3/4