Review of Samson and Delilah (2009) by Benjamin W — 09 Jun 2012

The one thing I can really subtract from this movie is that 'when people don't take care of themselves or bother to make an effort, they end up in hell.' It's a fact of life.

I cared little for the cinematography despite how good it was and I cared little for the romance. I had to watch this slow one-hour fourty-one minutes of another two kids' gutwrenching life, all the while thinking to myself, 'what is the point of this?'.

Normally I don't mind low-budget films, but nowadays I've been noticing a very distinctive trend with them: they are ALL dramas.

I can't stand dramas or dark themes in films like this. I'm very particular about my films. I use the cinema as a portal to escape from the grim aspects of everday life because, be honest, it's all around us. Civil disobedience, everday tragedies, deaths in the family, wars, everyday working life, people struggling to find work, drug addicts, homelessness... I don't need to have a spotlight shining on all of this crap.

Life is hard. Sure. The biggest problem was that this film pretty much shoved it down my throat.

People will enjoy it. People will find it compelling. People will be immersed in the story. But really, is a regular, movie-going audience really going to do something about the problem being shown in the flm? The society outside of Samson and Delilah couldn't give a damn about the situation in the movie, and I doubt that ordinary people watching this movie would do anything either when faced with a similar scene. It's just terrible awkwardness.

They're essentially street urchins, a part of a backwater society that refuses to develop, refuses to change, and are unable to or want to do anything to fix the problems in their society. Though the contrast between the two worlds is interesting, it's just another terrible truth I don't want to be a part of and want nothing to do with it.

I'll give it five stars for all the technical gimmicks, but as a well-rounded movie with a story I can get into, it's not enjoyable. They call it a comedy drama... it was just another drama for me.