Empire Falls (2005)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Memorable, crazy movie

Just what I expected

Good concept, poorly executed.

One question kept coming up while watching this. Why on Earth pay for so capable actors and then waste them on clumsy adaptation and catastrophic direction. We are talking Paul Newman, Robin Wright and Helen Hunt in one place, which will never happen again, and even Ed Harris is too good for this production.There is a reason why writers who don't write cinematic novels are normally nor allowed to write adaptations of their own work - they are in love with their own writing and turn a movie into an audio book.That's exactly what happened here. Long, unwieldy scenes with a narrator essentially reading the book and footage serving as a mere illustration. Doesn't HBO have anyone to review this stuff and keep sending it back to square one till it actually becomes cinematic. It even spells out book chapters and has things like "this will be in the latter chapter" which is plain pathetic.Good director can usually rectify this kind of mess but Fred Schepisi has shown such ineptitude that's it's painful to watch how he stumbles, neglects character development and uses multiple copies of prior sequences to the point that it becomes annoyingly noticeable. He also seems to be incapable to compose sequences of the right length to convey sub-plots. He either makes them ridiculously long and boring, all the way to having the book being read into your face, or he cuts them short, doesn't finish the park and makes the final cut look random.Particularly annoying aspect is that he doesn't have the first clue how to visually separate scenes that are long memories serving as sub plots from flashbacks (short and dramatic) and from the main/present scenes. They are all just equally flat, not even a change in the lighting or set decor to depict two different times.

I must admit that I had never watched the HBO mini-series when it aired. As a matter of fact I was just looking at the DVD selection in Wal-Mart one day and saw that the cover and description looked appealing, so I purchased it. What can I say, the characters were very strong, the cinematography, and direction was great, and the story was excellent. I can't help but love films that have you guessing every minute, and once you think you have things figured out they through a whammy on you. The all-star cast was wonderful. Ed Harris, Paul Newman,... They each added the familiar faces that make you feel as though you yourself lived in this town of Empire Falls, a town of beauty, laughter, and secrets.

The storyline is obviously excellent, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book. The cast is comprised of some fantastic actors (Ed Harris, Paul Newman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Helen Hunt, etc.). However, despite a previous poster's message that the film captures "Maine and Mainers," is not entirely true. Unfortunately, it's just another movie where the actors throw in the occasional Maine dialect attempt. Using words like Cah instead of Car, doesn't constitute a successful impersonation of a Mainer. I am from Kennebunkport, Maine, where a few of Ed Harris's childhood scenes were filmed. Not all of us have accents. And those who do, have something rather unique. Helen Hunt's portrayal of a Mainer was not very good at all. It takes a very good actor/actress to make a movie viewer forget that they're acting. This is one of those movies where, as a Mainer myself, I ended up critiquing the acting/accents and never became engrossed in the story. Chalk this up to just another Mystic River, Spitfire Grill, or characters like Cliff Claven on Cheers. It may be funny for the rest of the country, but people in New England can spot the poor attempt to nail the accent. The only movie where the accents were authentic was Good Will Hunting. But that was because Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck are from New England. And even in that movie, Oscar winning Robin Williams' accent was less than stellar. The movie is good, but not nearly as good as previous posts have indicated.

As an acting smörgåsbord, few films of the last year compare to Empire Falls. And I mean Smorgasbord in the sense that not everything is of the same quality, but, damn, sometimes bounty is its own reward. Ed Harris is an actor who only ever plays a few notes in a film, and you have to go back over the films to see the breadth of his talent. Paul Newman seems to have gone out of his way to pick a role that expanded his body of work, but there are some scenes where you see the mechanism creaking. Helen Hunt takes a giant leap away from her solid and likable safe zone into the most unlikable and outrageous character in a film of unlikable and outrageous characters and somehow makes the character both the most real and sympathetic. She seems like an actor poised for artistic greatness, if only there were any roles out there for her to sink her teeth into.