Incendiary (2008) Reviews

• Beautifully shot but slow and unfocused

  Gordon-112009-04-18

  This film is about a woman who lost her husband and son in a terror attack. Her life goes into a mess as she deals with her loss and hunts for the truth. I have mixed feelings for "Incendiary". On one hand, it is beautifully shot. Every scene is nicely planned and constructed. Camera work is great too. On the other hand, the plot is confusing and strange. The pacing is excruciatingly slow, with a lot of repetitive scenes (such as London burning). I also think "Incendiary" is not focused enough, as it tries to deal with too many topics including grief, guilt, quest for truth and the road to healing. If the filmmakers only focused on grief and guilt, without the subplots of the anti-terrorist guy or the suspect's family, I would have enjoyed the film more. Despite of Michelle Williams' superb acting, I find "Incendiary" disappointing and boring.

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• Self-destructs (spoilers throughout)

  Ricky_Roma__2008-10-19

  From the director of Bridget Jones' Diary comes a film about terrorism. If you think that sounds like a recipe for cinematic gold then you must be demented. As you'd expect from someone who made such a wretched piece of fluff, the emotions here are laid on rather thick. This isn't a film that knows a whole lot about subtlety. They might as well have just issued a box of hankies at the door. The film begins with an exceedingly cute child having fun with his mummy. He's so damn cute and so damn lovable that you know he's not going to make it through the film alive. And then when you realise that the film is called Incendiary, you know he's going to get blown into a million little pieces. Now having your son die in a terrorist attack is bad enough, but the film decides to make it several degrees worse. First of all, the mother in this film is no longer that enamoured with her husband. Therefore their relationship is rather loveless. However, not to fear, a sleazy journalist played by Ewan McGregor pops up. And no sooner have they exchanged a few words than they're exchanging bodily fluids on the young mother's sofa. Crikey. And as they're humping and pumping, they have a football game on the television. And at this game are the woman's husband and young son. And would you believe it, as they're doing the dirty, the stadium goes ka-boom and it's goodbye husband and son. After this you'd kind of think that the woman would suffer some pretty serious psychosexual problems. But this doesn't stop the woman from having sex with the head of the anti-terrorist unit (the woman's husband was in bomb disposal, so this guy was a work colleague). And this guy seems really nice. He just wants to look after her. Nevermind that he's dull as ditchwater and that he loves caravans. He's just a good, honest guy. Well, or so you'd think. I guess the woman should have noted the fact that the man has a beard, and as we all know, men with beards always have something to hide. Why else would they cover themselves in facial shrubbery? You see, the man knew that the terrorist attack was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Oh, that's pretty bad, isn't it? You were cheating on your husband as he went up in flames and now you've slept with the man who could have stopped it from happening. Maybe those psychosexual problems will finally kick in. If this all sounds far-fetched, it's because it is. But the film isn't finished with the nonsense. The woman strikes up a friendship with the young son of one of the bombers. Okay, this has potential for bonding and mutual healing. But no, there's a sequence where the two of them are at Waterloo train station. The kid is still unaware that his daddy was one of the bombers – he thinks he's just gone away – and as he's waiting for the woman to buy tickets, he sees newspapers with his dad's face plastered all over them. Needless to say he's a bit upset and begins behaving a little erratically. He then runs away. The police see this and because he's Asian and has a backpack, they take chase. The woman chases as well, and they all end up on an empty train platform. Every party shouts a lot, and as the boy reaches into his jacket, the police prepare to shoot. But as a marksman pulls the trigger, the woman steps into his sights and gets shot in the head by mistake. Holy Jean Charles de Menezes, Batman, the police screwed up again! But don't fear. The woman only gets grazed by a bullet so everything is hunky-dory. Amongst all this ridiculous melodrama there are a few good scenes. The best one is when the mother seriously begins to lose the plot and thinks that her son has come back. She spends all her time in the flat playing with him. She then leaves to get some food and the spell is broken when she actually has some real human interaction. When she rushes back her son is no longer there and she's devastated. However, this scene leads directly to another one of the film's maudlin flights of fancy. In response to the tragedy, a barrage balloon for every victim hangs in the sky with a picture of the victim on it. This to me sounds like an awful idea. Could you imagine that? You're just trying to get over the ordeal and you look out of the window and see your little Billy grinning from the sky. Yeah, nice one. And so the woman realises that her son is really dead and decides to visit his barrage balloon. And to do so she has to stand on a tall roof and teeter on the edge. Will she kill herself or not? Now the barrage balloons I hated, but we now have another one of the film's few decent sequences. We see the boy and the father talking about the Great Fire of London. The boy asks what they did back then, and the father says that everyone had a cup of tea. We then have a voice-over where the woman says that many people have tried to destroy this city but no one has succeeded. Every time someone tries to knock it down, we rebuild. And that's what she's got to do with her life. She's got to rebuild it. The film didn't deserve to generate any emotion, but a love of my home city meant that for once I actually felt something in this preposterous movie.

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• expectations..

  a_difference-12009-04-06

  i think the main problem with the movie isn't the movie, it's that people are going in expecting a thriller instead of a drama. yes the major plot points could be covered in 5 minutes.. but that's not the point of drama. your average thriller is about things that happen and happen to have people in them. this movie is about the people and how they feel and cope when something momentous happens. if you appreciate that you'll appreciate the movie better, or not watch it cos it's not something that appeals to you.. and that's fair enough. As far as the film goes, Michelle Williams carries it well. The accent's fine and the various states she goes through as she tries to deal with what has happened never feel you leaving disconnected or not understanding how she got there. McGregor is his usual charming self, tho his is not really a major part (likewise MacFadyen), this is a movie about the mother and so these two don't get an awful lot of screen time. The one fault i'd say is that the passage of time is not particularly well expressed particularly right at the end of the film when what seems to be a present day Ewan is wearing the exact same outfit as in the next scene which must be set sometime after. Regardless, it's a decent movie, but requiring empathy.. so if you prefer action flicks, watch something else.

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• Everyone is a critic!

  shultzl2008-12-17

  I have seen a negative review on this movie and I have to say that I am very tired of people picking apart movies to show how smart they think they are! This was a tragic and beautifully filmed movie that reminded me so much of The Sweet Hereafter. I believe that some people have a hard time watching others go through tragedy and grief and are uncomfortable expressing themselves. This movie drew a lump to my throat the size of a golf ball and made me hug my son extra hard at bedtime. Michelle Williams gives another outstanding performance and Ewan MacGregor is, as always, a complete pleasure to watch on screen. This film will come out on DVD this year and I would urge anyone with a heart to embrace it.

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• Terrorism in London

  incitatus-org2009-04-22

  A young beautiful woman (Michelle Williams) is trapped in an empty marriage tucked away in an ugly apartment block in London. Her pride and joy in her grey existence is her 4-year-old son. One day, as the two of them are at the football match, she seduces a slick journalist Jasper (Ewan McGregor) in the local pub. As fate would have it, they are locked in a lovers embrace, with the football match raging on behind them on TV, when the stadium going up in flames with a series of explosions. Her husband and son are both killed in the terrorist attack, leaving her broken and alone. If you are now thinking that a film about the aftermath of a major terrorist attack from the director of Brigit Jones' Diary sounds like a recipe for disaster, then you are partly right. But it is not bad for the reason you might think. The film is, for the most part, an emotional roller- coaster - you could be crying your way through most of it. But not because of her grieving for her lost family. The bombs are just the beginning - she still has to endure a full load of unlikely events in the hour to come. She understandably loses it along the way as the story becomes so over-dramatised that it is just ridiculous (especially when you run the story back in your head afterwards). Towards the end she enters a phase of grief hallucination and reconciliation with life. As the movie is neither funny nor exciting, this should have been the route to take all along. Concentrating on the mourning of the young mother, and perhaps even throwing in some guilt towards her semi-estranged husband. Her husband is just gone with his death. He is not missed nor is there any regret for his disappearance. Even for a semi-estranged husband this sounds a little harsh - she did worry about him, after all, so she must have felt something. It is also curious that they have no family, or friends who drop by to comfort her. A lonely marriage must have pushed them into some kind of a social circle, or a hobby, or at least the occasional phone call with their mothers. Was their life really that lonely. The movie is clearly intended as a pamphlet against terrorism, by showing the human cost at the level of ordinary people. It also takes the time to "explain" the resilience of London in a voice-over. It is a little desperate to save a movie through nationalism, but can actually be fit in here, although it could have been better prepared, by, for instance, by making her a more integral part of London. This is no masterpiece, nor an entertainment jewel, and can easily be missed altogether. A pity, because it does have some potential.

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