I agree the acting is well done. But everything else about this film is just bloody awful.
The script is terrible. It makes so little sense that even the most excellent acting cannot save it.
It was rated at 6.3 on IMDB which is kind of low. I would have rated it even lower. Maybe 5.9 because I don’t think it deserved to hit the 6 mark.
Anyway, it was just so stupid. A young woman is abducted to a foreign country. She has no money. She doesn’t speak the language. But, presumably from her own strength of will, she is able to exact revenge on a group of organized thugs and win out in the end. I’m sorry to say this. But that plot is just so improbable that I don’t see how it could make any sense.
I can understand how someone could become involved in the emotions of this plot and how they could go along with her. I may be reacting from a purely analytical point of view. But I just couldn’t go along with it. I had a very strong negative reaction to this movie. I just couldn’t believe that anyone could accept it and put themselves into the plot. But I can see how you could find it disturbing. I also found it disturbing, although perhaps for different reasons. I found it disturbing that the producer could expect people to go along and accept the premise of this film.
This. My wife and I spent the rest of the day in a distraught daze. My eyes are tearing and my chest is heaving as I type this out now – no joke.
Others that come to mind include “Breaking the Waves,” already mentioned in this thread.
There was an interesting SDMB thread a few months ago about the “bleakest movies,” many of which overlap films in this thread. I added several recommended films from the other thread to my Netflix list, interspersed in my DVD queue with other films. Now, every couple of weeks or so, my wife and I will be watching a DVD together, and she’ll say (usually correctly), “This must be one of those Doper ‘bleak’ movies!”
Here’s the bleak movies thread. Note that a few posters didn’t quite get the point of the thread, and just mentioned bad movies. But other than that, I think it’s a fascinating thread.
The scene in What Dreams May Come where the the daughter reveals herself hurts me like a punch in the stomach. That a little girl wanted her fathers approval so much, and felt she didnt have it, that she would choose to live eternity in the form of a stewardess her father had mentioned he thought was pretty.
Have you ever seen Gummo (1997)? If not, you might want to skip it. If you have, you may recall a scene where this kid is in the bathtub that’s full of yucky soapy water and he’s eating what might be a Baby Ruth or a Butterfinger or one of those chocolate covered candy bars. The kid is ugly, borderline hideous, to start with and already had my guts rumbling just from his appearance. But when he dropped the candy in the bath water and then fished it out and started eating it again I almost lost the contents of my stomach.
There are other grisly scenes in that vile movie, but I have never come as close to puking at one as that.
If that’s not a powerful emotional response, I apologize for threadpuking.
I still think that Come and See is easily the most bleak movie of all time - it makes Schindler’s List and Grave of the Fireflies look like picnicks in the park. That film is positively painful and disturbing to watch, all the moreso as it is partly surreal - a work of genius to be sure, but not one that a person would want to experience frequently.
For a reaction of sheer horror, there is nothing to match it that I know of.
I can usually relate to the characters in a movie, and will often have tears run down my face during the sad parts. But there are two movies that made me cry like no other.
Schindler’s List: The scene where a mother and daughter are herded into the showers with a bunch of other people. The daughter is clinging to her mother, and the mom is looking up, not knowing what was going to come out of the shower heads… would it be gas or water? They were terrified and the wait seemed to take forever.
It reminded me of myself and my oldest and I lost it. I’ve never cried so hard over a movie. I had to stop the play and go into the other room to get myself together, I was sobbing so hard I could barely breathe.
The other is at the end of The Color Purple when Celie sees Nettie across the field… she screams her name and kind of stumble/walks/runs to meet her. So powerful for me - tears of joy; it actually surprised me the first time it happened. I still get goosebumps when I think about it.
This is odd because I just thought of this yesterday. In high school I went to see When Harry Met Sally. Or maybe it was freshman year in college?
At the end of the movie when he tells her all the reasons why he really loves her, I started crying out of the blue. And I couldn’t stop. It was so embarrassing.
I would stop and then start again and couldn’t stop. I think because I realized my boyfriend didn’t love me like that and I didn’t love him, but I wanted that.
And then after my separation from my first husband when he let our house get foreclosed on and I had to choose between a homeless shelter and my mom’s house two hours away, someone suggested I watch “The Pursuit of Happyness”. My daughter was around the same age as the boy.
From the scene where they had to spend the night in the public restroom through the rest if the movie I was crying my eyes out. But I had to see what happened.
I cry at movies all the time. In fact, I just cry a lot. So that’s not extreme for me. If I feel teary, I don’t resist; I just give in to it. Crying has never seemed to me to be weak or neurotic, any more than laughing or sneezing or any other physical response to something.
BUT
Sophie’s Choice, holy moley, the scene where Sophie has to make the choice, God, I didn’t just cry, but I was overcome and swept away by gut-wracking sobs. And it wasn’t just me…there was loud sobbing all over the packed theater. The suddenness of the crisis-- it was like being hit by a freight train. And the helpless sadness and rage…eek. Have never wanted to see that movie again.
A couple of weeks after my mom’s funeral, my brother wanted my dad and I to go see The Grey with him. There is nothing positive or hopeful in the entire movie. It was awful to sit through.
Not a “movie”, but the one that stands out to me is Band Of Brothers. Very similar to Saving Private Ryan in emotional impact and production values, watching and listening to the actual men depicted was devastating, especially so for their thoughts of their long ago friends and comrades and the humbleness about what they achieved and endured.
Many true heroes are depicted in movies but we don’t often get to actually see them.
This is sappy, but while I was watching “Life is Beautiful” in college, I broke down crying while thinking about relatives I never met who were murdered in the Holocaust.
The fact that I was drinking and partaking in another substance with a friend probably didn’t help.
That’s the LEAST sappy thing I ever heard. It’s not sappy to realize how your family was devastated by the Holocaust. I’m so sorry for your family’s loss. Thousands and thousands of families suffered that loss, too. You wouldn’t call them sappy for remembering. Be kind to yourself.
That film is positively painful and disturbing to watch, all the moreso as it is partly surreal - a work of genius to be sure, but not one that a person would want to experience frequently.