The Fall

About the only thing I learned from this film is that Budapest is now the new Paris where one goes to find his creative muse. At least that's what Craig Sheffer is there for according to him. But as far as I'm concerned I didn't get to see enough of Budapest to make it worthwhile even as a travelogue.

But happily living and kanoodling with Kim Huffman has enough diversions and apparently he's living off her. But then the sexy Helene DeFougerolles breaks into his place after escaping a couple of men after her. After that Sheffer starts thinking with his male member.

A cursed and muddled plot characterizes The Fall and no one walks away from this with their artistic reputations intact.

It took me a while to figure out where this movie was set but I was enjoying it all the way... The actress who plays marta is sexy and... what an alluring accent! I liked the final plot twist, it was totally unexpected and out of the usual "plot twist" hollywood tradition... fun movie.

Even though at the time I thought I had nothing else to do besides watching it, and that it was on TV, I regret wasting my time on this movie. This flick is definitely one of the most incoherent, twisted, worthless pieces of work I've ever seen. The story involves so many contradictions, it becomes an unintentional comedy (and that only if you have a big sense of humor). The picture, sound, and other technical work is OK, but if you're just looking to see good technical work, then get the National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. The sex scene seems to be made just to accomplish a requirement (because it was too soft, so unnecessary and unjustifiable to the story). It's like mixing elements without any sense of coherence, just to get a movie that has it all. And yep, it has action (poor performance there), it has mystery, suspense, sex (too graphic and too soft at the same time), nudity, violence, BUT NO LOGICAL ADHESION BETWEEN THEM. Big waste of time to say the less.

The all too brief images of a very limited number of Budapest locales and the few actual Hungarian actors, plus the excellent Jurgen Prochnow are not enough to save this insipid, convoluted mess. The 3 other leads deliver performances akin to cardboard cut-outs, although it may well be the very poorly written script's lack of coherence that's to blame. If it's Budapest you're interested in, you'll do better watching a travelogue. There are many other very fine foreign films that deserve a viewing, give one of those a chance and pass on this one.

First off, I write off any film that uses a cat jumping on someone to startle the audience. Budapest makes a beautiful location and it's too bad Frost and Piddington don't make more of it as was done, for example, with Cannes in _Ronin_. The start of the film is very exciting, especially when the heroine runs into a car but deteriorates rapidly from there into cliché upon cliché (including the jumping cat - just out of curiosity, has anybody seen a cat ever do that to a person, and from where are they supposed to jump?). Perhaps it is the proliferation of clichés but the film cannot sustain the level of suspense shown in the beginning. And if you cannot figure the "surprise" prior to its unveiling I've got some swampland to show you in Florida.