From this trailer, it looks like it might be an engagingly crazy movie, even if I didn't find the director's last film, 2000's The Cell to be too memorable. The use of the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (or, as I call it, the theme music for Zardoz :P ) piqued my interest. (Does the "From acclaimed director Tarsem" line perhaps refer to his music video work?)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=n1YwOybwTrc

It's not every movie where the protagonists are introduced as "the Indian, the ex-slave, the an explosives expert, Charles Darwin, and the masked [bent?]" and the baddie is "Governor Odious" (I'm amazed George Lucas didn't use that name in one of the Star Wars prequels) :P

The IMDB entry lists this movie as a 2006 production, has it been on the shelf for a while?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/

If nothing else, it's got a pretty impressive list of filming locations:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/locations

Visually the film is excellent and worth seeing for that alone. Technically it's really well made. It also has a nice surprising sequence which works as a nice heart warming nod to movie lovers, even though it doesn't necessarily fit into the film.

Overall, I found the film incredibly anticlimactic that goes nowhere fast - it just gets stuck in the second act and never really shifts out of a mostly bankrupt story.

The lead actor feels incredibly miscast and wooden. He has a role that needs to garner a lot of sympathy for the audience. Instead the actor delivers a performance that delivers complete indifference and pushes an audience even further out of a film lost in its own story. I could see the film getting pushed back for further editing.

The young actress that plays the female lead really puts in a strong performance.

Bandit? Watched the trailer a week or two ago, but I'm pretty sure it was "bandit."

"Acclaimed director Tarsem" seems a bit of a stretch. But "often-accused-of-plagiarism director Tarsem" doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.

Still, this does look intriguing and purty. Especially since my man Darwin (or as I like to call him, "The Chuck") is in it. Does he play much of a significant role, Blake? Or is he just there for weirdness or metahistorical referentiality - i.e., could they have slotted in, say, Freud just as easily?

Weird, this is the second comment thread here this morning where I've had occasion to mention Darwin or evolution. Yay!

I don't really recall Leo Bill as Darwin having much to do or say. I think there was some fun to it though. The character seems to mainly be there for weirdness. If they had spent as much time on the story as they did with the visuals and location shooting, there is no telling how good the movie could have been.

Mr. Bill is fantastic in The Living and The Dead in a role that reminds me a lot of Hywel Bennett as Martin in Twisted Nerve.

Based on this review from Roger Ebert, I would say that The Fall is pretty close to the top of my "must see" list now:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...VIEWS/805290301