Review of Immortal (2004) by A Z — 26 Sep 2007

Directed by: Enki Bilal.

Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Thomas Kretschmann, Linda Hardy, Frederic Pierrot, Thomas Pollard.

First off I will say that the whole concept of the film is interesting and I think the director certainly had a vision to make it right, unfortunately, in the way of story and even style at times, it is an incoherent mess of a film.

Now with any normal moviegoer, they will stop the review right here and not tell people why they didn't like the film, but I will tell you why. I will start off with the story, like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I thought that the ideas and the concept that come across is quite interesting and could have been great if done right, unfortunately, the screenwriters have too many ideas and try fitting them all into a short running time and the film jumps around too much and alot of it is jusr plain confusing. So in some ways, this is a typical film of style over substance, but even then, the style isn't exactly focused. What the director has gone and done with this film, much like the screenwriters, crammed in alot of visual ideas and they don't always work. At times, some of the CGI is amazing, at others it is just downright bad, but what I don't get is why did they have to have actors and then actors with some makeup effects (which were also amazing), and then some with a bit of CGI and then the rest copies of characters that look like they just walked of the set of the video game 'Half Life'. And that is the main thing that put me off, the use of typical video game looking CGI characters.

So to finish off, the visual style is all over the place and some of it is amazing, the story is a mess that shows some potential in scenes but not enough....and I will also mention that Linda Hardy was definately beautiful in this. A disappointment.