I think this could have been a good film, but, as others have mentioned, the split-screen 'style' (?) is incredibly annoying over 100-odd minutes of watching, or, in this case, watching TWICE. That adds up to 200-odd minutes of watching five different stories, all while distracting you with camera gimmickry.
In the mid-1960s, a graphic designer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada named Chris Chapman created the split-screen idea for a short film on the Province of Ontario for the provincial government. It was a sensation at Expo '67 in Montreal, and was such a novel idea that Toronto director Norman Jewison (and others) used it in 1960s films.
The idea, predictably, went nowhere. It was trendy, had flair, but was not sustainable over the length of an entire film. Jewison used it sparingly in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and it annoyed critics even then. And here, almost 40 years later, we have a director who thinks it would be a great idea to try it again, this time (unlike Jewison, who was far more judicious) over the ENTIRE STRETCH of a movie.
I was astounded that this was done. It defies basic physical laws. The human eye just cannot catch up with a blizzard of jump cuts (and that's what they really amount to) over a feature-length. Instead of intensifying the drama, it instead made me truly irritated.
Repeat: I THINK this could have been a good film. Or is that films, as in plural?
