Review of Samson and Delilah (2009) by Dean M — 04 May 2010

Samson and Delilah held a lot of promise but with a constant barrage of frustrating and depressing moments renders the viewer rather numb and unimpressed rather than sympathetic. The emotion simply isn't handeled well enough to translate on the screen leaving it muted, and frankly, a little boring at most moments.

This movie was making me angry and upset while I witnessed the two young characters cause themselves to fall further and further into the worst circumstances possible. These events however are sprinkled sparingly between overly-long scenes of Samson huffing glue and staring at nothing or listening to his brothers band play that same 2 chord song over and over. Through the entire movie the main characters never say a word to eachother which is a brave choice, but one I'm not so sure works to it's full effect.

The cinematography is "nice" but didn't strike me as anything spectacular given the desolate locations that could have been used beautifully. McNamara and Gibson, as first time actors, do well with their roles and add to the realism in general but fail at portraying their sadness.

It is so bleak and grates not in the way it's intended and certainly feels atleast twice as long as it's 1hr 40 runtime. Despite this there are many aspects of Samson and Delilah I enjoyed.A solid and interesting attempt for a first film, but certainly one you could only watch once.