Commandments

When someone takes such a good idea... a man who decides to break the ten commandments in order to spite god... and creates a movie out of it, I tend to sit up and pay attention. I won't lie, part of me watching this was in order to enjoy watching someone mocking religion(me being a lifelong Atheist), at least at first(when I watched this at age... what, eleven? when it first came out), but I started to see it as a somewhat good satire. However, that's all it is... somewhat good satire. There is some good questions in this film... dealing with faith and religion. However, the film spends too much time on... nothing. Plenty of time passes without anything important happening. And in the end, it's just too cookie-cut and happy to mean anything. It should have kept with the style instead. The whole film is shot very darkly and dreary, every single scene looks at though it's night-time and is seen through the eyes of a natural born pessimist. The plot is fairly good. The pacing is decent. The acting is solid. The characters are fairly well-written, though a few of them are underdeveloped. The whole romantic part of the film(together with the ending) makes it too sweet and pretty. Too positive compared with the rest of the film. As if the writer/director was bound and gagged while someone more positive finished the film and added the romantic subplot. The dark comedy is one of the best points of the film. Very funny. The satire is quite good, as well. All in all, a fairly good film, but not one to make a quest out of getting your hands on. I recommend it to fans of the actors and of dark comedies. People with questions for religion(particularly Christianity) might also want to check it out. 5/10

This movie is really good. However, be warned, you will probably not like it if you are extremely religious, as it is about a man who tries to break all ten commandments. You will probably also like it better if you're a fan of one of the actors in it, as the plot is very strange and different, as well as dark. It has mostly romance and drama but also some comedy. The only part I really didn't like about this movie was the extremely unrealistic ending. However, that kind of added a sort of irony to the movie, and dry humor. So, in a nutshell, you should see this movie because it's good. Oh, and there's a dog in it too.

One thing I can say for Courteney Cox, she really got hotter with Kurt Russel in 3000 Miles to Graceland than she did with Aidan Quinn here. Not that she wasn't hot, but Kurt got the better deal.

This was a quirky black comedy about a man who lost his reason for living and decided to damn god and break all his commandments. Well, damning god is breaking one of them. Hooking up with his sister-in-law was just one of the ten, but what kept you interested was how he was going to break the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" one.

Good support by Anthony LaPaglia as Courtney's husband, Harry. "I break 5 or 6 commandments every day before lunch." Not a good man, but, you know how that karma thing works. It all ended well.

The idea (a man thinks he has been targeted for suffering by God, so he decides to get his revenge by breaking the Ten Commandments one by one) is intriguing. It's so intriguing, in fact, that this was one of the very rare instances where I happened to rent a film without having heard a single thing about it beforehand, based solely on the plot synopsis on the video cover instead. Unfortunately the film turned out to be a messy talkathon. It is certainly offbeat and beautifully photographed, but it seems to lack a clear sense of direction, of where it is going and what point it is trying to make, and the characters are not sufficiently developed. The writer-director of this film poses thought-provoking, eternal theological questions ("If God is able but unwilling to prevent evil, isn't it logical to assume He is malevolent?"), but perhaps lacks the courage to follow his premise through to the end. (**)

Aidan Quinn ("Legends of the Fall") stars as Seth Warner, who recently has suffered one major setback after another: the tragic disappearance of his wife, the destruction of his house, and the loss of his job. And, for good measure, his dog is crippled by a bolt of lightning. Assuming that God himself has it in for him, Seth determines to get even by breaking all 10 of the Commandments.

Written & directed by Daniel Taplitz ("Breakin' All the Rules"), this dark comedy-drama is savvy enough to ask some pertinent theological questions, and has some good moments, but for this viewer, it didn't come off as well as I would have liked. Part of it is that I would have liked to see it get even darker, and go into more detail as the unhinged Seth broke those Commandments. Instead, it gets sappy & romantic as Seth falls in love with his neglected sister-in-law Rachel Luce (Courteney Cox, the "Scream" series), whom he initially just wanted to use re: the "thou shalt not covet thy neighbors' wife" Commandment.

The film has an effective offbeat quality, but Taplitz just doesn't follow through that interestingly on a grabber of a premise. It's too bad, because he does get solid performances out of his cast, with Anthony LaPaglia ('Without a Trace') rounding out the star trio as Rachels' slimy husband Harry, an investigative journalist. The character is amusingly scummy, and LaPaglia pretty much steals the show.

While such a film may initially bother some who are religious, it ultimately has enough going on that it could provoke some pertinent discussions afterwards.

Six out of 10.