The Greatest (2009)

A 6.6 out of 10 is disgusting, this movie was amazing and is definitely one of my favorites. I just finished it and I am still crying. I cried from start to finish, even laughed a little. Its heart warming in a kind of dark way. I will recommend this movie to everyone I know and will most definitely watch it again, and will more than likely cry just as much. Anyone debating on whether or not to watch this movie....WATCH IT! Its wonderful. Kept me interested from start to finish, awesome casting. This movie makes you feel like you knew Bennet and that you were grieving with the family. You feel their pain even though you may not have gone through something as tragic.

Fmovies: I saw over 20 films at Sundance this year and The Greatest was by far my favorite. The performances were truly special - I suspect (as a lot of people do) Carey Mulligan and Jhonny Simmons will become big stars because of this movie. Pierce was quite good as well - he shows a side we've never seen before and I applaud him for that. I've never been a big Bond fan but now I am a Pierce fan for sure. There is an excellent soundtrack to the movie - a lot of great bands - some that I actually wrote down and plan to check out. It was a lot more polished than anything I had seen in Sundance - it looked and felt like a real movie. The woman next to me went thru a box of tissues - it's pretty emotional but I left the theater feeling hopeful as opposed to sad. If it comes out in theaters I think it will do really well.

Except for the baby ,the movie will remind Italian cinema buffs of "La Stanza DeL Figlio" and the part of Ryan is close to Conrad the young brother of "ordinary people" ;like in the contemporary "rabbit hole" each of the parents desperately searches for solace:the mother tries to talk to the other injured driver to know the last words of her son (whereas Nicole Kidman,fascinated by a comic ,wants to believe that in parallel universes ,her son is happy);the father tries to live again,goes to the movie theater with the pregnant girlfriend,attends the echography whereas his wife quickly leaves the room "if you lose your dog,we're not given a puppy!" The cast is excellent ,particularly Pierce Brosnan,cast against type :he and his younger son seem to have overcome the pain,but when they finally break down,their despair and their tears are deeply moving.The flashbacks are short and effective ,particularly the last one which is also the end of the movie and which is not a goodbye but a hello.

The Greatest fmovies. The Greatest (2009)

A crisis of youth becomes a crisis for a whole family, and it's serious stuff. There's an attempt, very conspicuous in gesture and angst filled expressions, to be gritty and real, and it's a believable scenario. It's a tearjerker, surely, an intimate psychodrama dripping in sentiment.

However, the movie depends almost purely on this terrible crisis to succeed, and that's actually slightly backwards, in movie terms. That is, it should be the writing and acting that sweeps us in and makes us share the grief of the main characters. You end up wanting to empathize, but it's sometimes despite the movie, which pushes very hard, like a friend who wants to make you feel bad about something. It has such touching moments it's hard to quite accept that a lot of it is clumsily written, almost like a high budget beginner's film, which sounds worse than I mean it. But you'll see, I think, even if you love it thoroughly, that it works modestly. So accept its flaws, ignore the obvious flashbacks to the good times, skip the dining room table where people are sitting all on one side so we can see them all from the camera, ignore the patter that is meant to make life ordinary and doesn't, and so on. Be forgiving or give it a pass.

What saves the movie (somewhat) from its excesses is the performance of the lead girl, Rose (Carey Mulligan), and the father, Mr. Brewer, played by Pierce Brosnan, who is a nuanced dad, whatever his James Bond pedigree, though neither one is given decent lines to work with. (Brosnan was also a producer, go figure.) The mother is meant to be disturbed in her grief, and she sure is. The sexy grad assistant is too too obvious even for the movies. And the brother, well, what is his role, actually, just to add a second improbable plot? And there is surveillance video of the crash, which is beyond even reasonable open-mindedness, given the isolation implied by the first several minutes of the movie. The sensationalism of that, alone, will warn you of what's to come.

Okay, one last confession. It gets so emotionally atomic at times, with the throbbing cellos coming in the background, I had to laugh out loud. I swear. And yet, I see how it deals with some truly, believably gorgeous stuff.

This film is about a family who grief over the loss of their son in a traffic accident. This process is complicated by the unexpected arrival of a teenage girl who claims to have their son's unborn child.

"The Greatest" is powerful and touching. The mother, played by the amazing Susan Sarandon, is relentless in knowing the truth about her son's final moments. She gives such a moving performance that anyone gets saddened by her tragic loss. Carey Mulligan also deserves mention, as she displays a spectrum of convincing emotions effortlessly. Judging by the stream of great movies she is in, she will be a big star and Hollywood knows it.

"The Greatest" is a powerful story that moves anyone easily. As Susan Sarandon's character says, once your child is born, a woman knows that her child is the greatest. It is easy to relate to this statement, and yet everyone seems to be forgetting to celebrate this fact. As this film shows, you never know what you have got until its gone. "The Greatest" is a powerful reminder that you should treasure your family before its too late.

The Greatest, starring Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon, and Carey Mulligan (An Education), is a relatively unknown movie by a first time director (Shana Feste) that is nevertheless quite good.

Brosnan and Sarandon are married and play the grief stricken parents of two teenage boys, one of whom dies suddenly in a horrific traffic accident at the very beginning of the film. Sarandon is excellent and demonstrates she is a superior actress in her portrayal of a mother grieving I would almost say to the extreme. She is haunted by what happened to her son, by the fact that he stayed alive for 17 minutes and that she was not there to help him. She simply cannot get over the loss and resents her husband for moving on so quickly. A very poignant scene occurs when he offers her a bell, a sort of tool to help her with her grief, and tells her to ring it each time she thinks of their deceased son. She takes the bell from him and starts ringing it- non-stop. This and many other moments were extremely sad, showing how people cope with loss in very different ways.

Things get even more complicated with the early appearance of Carey Mulligan's character, the girlfriend of the late young man, and her surprise announcement. This leads to even more sadness and hurtful reminders for the mother, but also a certain easing of the pain for the father, which inevitably results in great tension between the couple. Sarandon gets especially furious, distressed and jealous when, trying to reach her husband during a break down, she finds his phone turned off and learns subsequently that he had gone to the movies with the young girl. The scene escalates so much with an almost silent force that Brosnan picks her up and throws her fully clothed into the ocean, to awaken her and make her see that her anguish is unreasonable and causing pain to the rest of the living members of their family.

The younger brother, appearing almost indifferent at first, succumbs to his emotions in the second half of the movie. The father, who keeps a cool demeanor and tries to hold the family together through his strength also finally collapses and interestingly, Sarandon picks up where he left off and comforts him, telling him that their son did not suffer. The whole family and their links are very credible and Brosnan astonished me by being particularly realistic.

Even if this movie is almost painful to watch due to the difficult subject matter, it is very well acted and written, making it extremely emotional and powerful. It ends well so do not be too afraid, but if you are a crier, a tear or two will definitely be shed.

My rating: 7.5 For more reviews please check out http://paulinasmovies.blogspot.com!!!