Movie Info

If movies were solely about the cheap pleasure of watching gorgeous people make grand gestures in epic circumstances--because, sure, sometimes movies ...(read more...) are--director/screenwriter John Duigan's goopy, obvious, overwrought contemplation of how global unrest really messes with your love life would be Oscar-worthy. Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, and Penelope Cruz are headstrong 1930s playthings who each discover that they need to pull their attractive heads out of their inviting behinds if they're going to play a part in stopping the spread of European fascism. Charlize is socialite Gilda, who ensnares both brooding, Cambridge-educated Irishman Townsend and Spanish rebel Cruz (who is particularly ill-defined) in a love triangle while seemingly caring not a whit for the imminent goosesteps of the Nazis. Charlize wears a lot of fabulous outfits, and she and real-life paramour Townsend do impetuous things like sport fedoras while romping in a milky-white bathtub; Cruz, meanwhile, performs a passionate impromptu striptease. Hey, there are worse ways to be entertained. Unfortunately, you don't really give a damn about any of them, and you can predict what's going to happen to all of them well before it actually does. It's an efficient, glamorous, hokey, ultimately downbeat time-killer for anyone willing to spend two hours trying to decide which of the doe-eyed trio you'd save from destruction first. --Steve Wiecking

Director: John Duigan

MPAA: R

Running Time: 121 min.

Release Date: Sep 17, 2004

Cast: Allen Altman, Charlize Theron, David La Haye, Gabriel Hogan, John Jorgenson, Karine Vanasse, Penelope Cruz, Peter Cockett, Steven Berkoff, Stuart Townsend, Thomas Kretschmann