City of Ghosts

source: City of Ghosts

Well, you gotta admit Dillon TRIED something a little different. Although far from a flop, the movie's greatest achievement is to have set tourism in Cambodia back at least a decade. Who would set foot in the place after watching this? Third-world doesn't cover it - this is Hell on earth! The excellent opening credits set up the Insurance angle which I have to say establishes the base storyline premise within five minutes of viewing. Whether Dillon is involved in the scam personally is not clear for a while, nor does it really matter. The story takes very much second-place to the setting. Dillon obviously has a fascination with the place and wanted to make a movie there. Depardieu makes for an effortless downmarket French hotelier with a mean kick and Skarsgard does a superb Denholm Elliot take-off as Caan's partner. Speaking of Caan.....I figure his karaoke sequence here singing in fluent Cambodian is both the highlight of the film and his career. It was quite unnervingly compassionate and sad I thought. Truly worth the price of the film hire just to see that! Touch of the Linda Hunts with the pedicab driver in fact quite a few echoes of THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. The rating here a tad on the lean side...it's a definite 6!

Don't know about the story and all. But having been to Combodia, all the crazyness makes a lot of sense! Great shots of the country and Dillon has got a really good feel for it. OK, the characters and parts of the story seem a bit far fetched. But knowing the country some of this stuff is not too far of! Great movie I thought! Some of the characters hanging around at that hotel are just like the people I saw back there. Also, quite a few amateur actors..which is really cool I admit though, If this film would take place in a country that I do not personally know I would probably not get much out of it. But in any way I think it is underrated lots.

Matt Dillon's feature directorial debut left me disappointed. While the cinematography was good and the landscapes were interesting, I did not get the feeling that many of the actors were very connected to what they were doing. Matt Dillon did not show a very strong personal connection to James Caan (nor Caan to him)-a man he traveled halfway around the world to find, essentially to tell him that he no longer desired the life he was leading. Natascha McElhone's character seemed to fall for him very suddenly, and the whole relationship seemed as though it were added just to pass some time while plot unfolded, not as a very integral part of the plot. The only real interesting character in the film was the belligerent bartender, played by Gerard Depardieu. The movie becomes somewhat complex, but they give you few hints to sort out the facts as you go along, and you get the feeling that everyone is lying to everyone else, which simply gets annoying. I would have liked to see this drive Matt Dillon's character as crazy as it did me, but instead he keeps it pretty monotone throughout the entire film, never showing any extreme emotion despite the extreme situations he finds himself in. The result is a movie that you lose interest in before it reaches it's climax, so that when the truth is finally revealed, you no longer care.

This film is directorial * at its best. Matt Dillon may be a good director, and he definitely is an excellent actor, but he shouldn't try to be both at once. We were taught this in the first week of film school. It is next to impossible to objectively direct a film if you are staring in it. As an actor, you develop too personal of a relationship with the character. This relationship conflicts with the director's role. The director is meant to chisel the character into a sharper version of the acted model. This is where Matt Dillon fails. You can tell that he has fallen in love with his own scenes. This film could have easily been 30 minutes shorter than it was. The repetition in some scenes was unbearable. Let's also talk about the contrived love scene that was thrown in just so that the lead character could get some action. I think that the goal was to have a 'The Usual Suspects' type of plot- a plot that is full of questions and expectations. This might have worked except for the fact that the film is so long winded that it is easy to forget your question by the time the answer arrives. The plot is basically that of a New York insurance broker who flies to Cambodia to escape a scandal that is rocking North America. In Cambodia, Dillon's character, Jimmy, tries to find his former business partner, and insinuated father portrayed by James Caan. I don't really know what the plot of this film is or what the main theme was intended to be. This is not a good sign. I know that there are a lot of corpses shown. I know that the story was not developed in the proper areas to exact an emotional response from the audience. Lack of focus is the main weakness of this film. There are too many sub plots. There's the insurance scam, the father-son controversy, the love story, the Russians, the traitor, the archeologists, the casino. The list goes on and on. How are we to enjoy a film with so many events going on? Perhaps the greatest strength of this film is the relationship built between Jimmy and his Cambodian friend. Although I liked this relationship, it seems to me that this trend of 'white man befriending local man to succeed' is getting overused.

Whevever an "artist" tries to do it all, at least one of the roles is lacking. In this case in which Dillon is actor, director and writer, all fail. This movie is filled with clichés. The acting is stiff and rich in the art of mumble. The female romantic character is worse than Katherine Houghton or Michelle Johnson who, by comparison would be award winners. At least Johnson displayed a spectacular body! I had hoped it would put me to sleep, but this one is bad enough to keep you awake. Add to that the extreme violence and predictable plot twists and one would pray for a sequel to "Heavens Gate." After this, the only thing left is to add one more line to achieve the minimum. Gerard Depardieu! What more do you need to know?

I had the opportunity to view this at a pre-screening in New York. Palm, Inc. was sponsoring the event and I was lucky enough to be invited. Given the pre-party and the potential for celebrities to attend (there were none), I was pretty hyped. Loving movies like I do, this was the one of the best of all possible worlds in which to see this movie - it didn't help. "City of Ghosts" is Matt Dillion's first shot at directing and writing a film and it shows. The main character, Jimmy Cremming, is supposed to be this un-trusting scam artist that's been trained in it all his life. That may sound good on paper, but you have to demonstrate it on the screen and Dillion simply refused to show his character as un-sympathetic. If the character has grown up grifiting and scamming then there should be some evidence of it in his demeanor at least and there just isn't. As a result, the main character has no story arc. Although he is supposedly going through a transformation, there is no evidence of it. None of the major characters have any depth or range to them either. James Cann walked through this role, Stellan Skarsgard does nothing but play a drunk and Natascha McElhone was nothing but eye candy. A lot of good talent that was simply wasted. There were two notable exceptions. Two actors were able to brake out of the bad script enough to create a character that you could actually care for. G?rard Depardieu plays a very funny inn keeper/bartender. His role could have been almost forgotten, yet instead Depardieu instilled such humor and compassion in his role that it's one of the more memorable. The other actor was Kem Sereyvuth, who plays Sok, the local rickshaw operator who takes a liking to Jimmy Cremming and vice versa. Sereyvuth may have been type casted a bit in his role, I don't know much about him, but his portrayal is honest and sincere. You get the feeling that they found the actor pulling a rickshaw and gave him a job. I'm sure that's not the case, but it's a testimony to his acting ability. There is one facet of the movie that I greatly enjoyed and that was the portrayal of Cambodia. I have traveled some, but I've never been to Cambodia. Having said that, I got the feeling that I had truly traveled there. The use of music and the almost documentary style of the cinematography in the early portions of the movie transports you into another place. Hats off to Jim Denault for giving the film a distinct visual feel that gives the viewer something to chew on.

this movie sucked, plain and simple. pseudo storyline, random expendable characters, filmed on location (why spend the extra cash!?) in like kathmandu or something. It was just bad. I swear to God if I wasnt at Sundance when I saw this, I would have booed.

okay, so my friends and i went to our local indie theater last night, just to see what was playing. foolishly, we bought tickets for this movie, thinking we were seeing "city of god," the movie about brazilian gangs and slums that got rave reviews. (hey, everyone makes mistakes...) so we were the only 4 people in the theater, and began to wonder why. "city of god" was supposed to be excellent. the movie began with scenes of a flood, and the name 'matt dillon' flashed across the screen. "what?!" asked my friend, in outrage. "what is this crap? do you guys want to leave?" "no, no," we all said, "we don't know, maybe this movie could turn out to be good." in retrospect, we should have left right then. (SPOILERS) this was quite possibly the worst movie ive EVER seen. the only aspects saving it were the standout performance of gerard depardieu (whom we laughed at in the opening credits, making predictable 'my father the hero' and 'bogus' jokes, but he actually held the movie together) and the cinematography of cambodia. when 2 of my friends actually walked out of the theater halfway through the movie, one said, "boy, i sure hope there are some more ambiguous killing scenes" within the 5 minutes after she left, we saw at least 3 more. i was horribly disappointed in james caan's role, matt dillon's pompous writing of his own character, and the lack of cohesiveness about the entire movie. when the 2 of us who stayed for the rest of the movie joined the 2 that left, they asked us, "so what happened?" we had to respond that we really had no idea. this movie wasnt supposed to be a comedy, but i laughed throughout the entire thing at how ridiculous it was. 30 second scenes would show a person being stabbed, and you wouldnt know who it was, why they had been killed, or who had done it, and it would only be mentioned again in passing, if at all. our theory was that matt dillon got really drunk and wrote this movie.. "yeah, landmines would be cool! and a severed leg, and some 13 year old cambodian whores, and... and yeah a big gunfight, and oh, ill hook up with the hot chick, and there should be lots of drinking, and the old guy should end up being my dad! thats a blockbuster hit right there!" save your money on this one.

clearly an incredible waste of good actors, except for Dillon, who, since drugstore and mary, can't be taken seriously as anything other than a cartoon character or drug addled, bad tempered buffoon. Plot unwinds like a Where's Waldo comic book, with weak contrived scenes to showcase wacky expatriate character behaviour. Sinister Vietnamese villains are laughable, especially when forced to follow an idiotic plan to - uh - be really sinister in an oriental way, I guess. James Caan should not be involved in any project that requires him to speak any other language than Bronx, and should certainly never be forced to wear a sarong. Dillon still looks great in sunglasses, and who wasn't surprised when a privileged white love story popped up right in the middle of Saigon? Gosh I hoped he got the girl, I didn't actually watch the ending.