Motives

Thin script, average acting, dumb plot but l liked looking at Shemar Moore. For the male viewers beautiful women added spice to an amateur B movie production. Kinda like a porn movie without the porn....watch and you will see what I mean.

I thought that the movie was good. I feel that the story line could have been more developed, in some ways but overall it was a good and well written movie. It has some very interesting twists and turns that are very surprising, but make the movie that much better. Its full of suspense. Its a good mystery thriller.

I believe that is was beautiful to see African American people in a movie like this. Instead of seeing the typical, gangster movie or comedy or a movie showing the black struggle. It was just good to see a mystery, a smart film that was just about how life can be, not so much about race. I hope to see many more movies like this.

Motives is a souped up soap opera with a restricted rating due to graphic sexual content, more sex with a little violence thrown in . Everyone looked so pretty and the life these fine people lived definately makes you want to covet. It was an interesting film just easily one read like a Soap Opera hyped up in its own melodrama.

Emery Sims played by pretty boy Shamar Moore, is just that, a pretty boy who owns a restaurant business who's very wealthy and respected in the community. When a consensual affair goes wrong along with a murder investigation pending, Sims world begans to spiral down. But as the events unfold Sims begins to question the ones closest to him including his most trusted wife played by Vivica Fox. I thought her perfomance was bland in this movie as they made her into the attractive yet subdued nagging wife.

So yes its been done before and its all acting. Need I say two of Young and the Restless' (Moore and Rowell) were plucked from this sitcom. I also found the beginning subplot unnecessarily used for this story. I do however support the rise of more all star casts of African Americans in films whether their backed independently or not. I just wished that the storylines weren't so confined to stereotypes and overdone material. There's no slighting of the actors because I'm a fan of Fox and Rowell. And let's not forget the knockout performance from Mr. Joe Torrey himself. Just lose the material. You have a potential fan waiting.

This film tries to combine several genres, in a quite a strange mix. The plot happens in Atlanta, and involves a businessman and restaurant owner married un-happily apparently with a charity organization leader, involved in all type of dubious activities, including stock market fraud, murder, and a steamy extra-marital affair. The pace and the moral approach is of a 70s TV soap opera, combined with a 90s erotic thriller. Nothing too bad, but nothing original or really interesting either. Characters are one-dimensional, their physical appearance is all that counts. The plot twist towards the end works quite well, or it worked for me in any case.

The odd thing is that all main characters, without any exception are Afro-American. This does not work in my opinion - the American society as I know it is multi-racial, and reversed segregation does not work, not on life, and not on screen. Why? Is this meant to be a revenge to the all segregated approach of film making in the 40s or 50s? Well, it does not succeed to be more than a DVD rental minor film, and the reason is probably that it never tries to be more.

Not to be mis-understood, Afro-American film-making can be great (mentioning just Spike Lee is kind of trivial) but only when it approaches life and minority causes in a realistic and good taste manner. This is not the case here. 4 out of 10 on my personal scale.

One of the outcomes of the struggle Black actors in Hollywood obviously face (judging from their relative absence on the screen) is that one can afford to have an entire cast of actors who can actually act. Much that comes out of the mainstream film industry is that a star or two leads of relatively unseasoned, mediocre cast of pretty faces. Films such as this, with a notably soap-operaish plot, brighten the screen and captivate out interests because of the talent of so many talented actors on one screen, in one film. It's was an experience to see seasoned actors play off one another, feeding viewers desire to see what would happen next. And Vivica Fox is just fierce. Shemar Moore and most of the others are fine, too!