Cassandra's Dream

Buy This Item Cassandra's Dream by Weinstein Company  Available from Amazon  $15.99  on 8-27-2008     Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as working class brothers whose dreams of better lives leads to desperation greed and deadly betrayal. When gambling debt and an expensive courtship place them in a financial bind a rich uncle (Tom Wilkinson Michael Clayton) offers them an out in exchange for committing murder. Featuring gripping performances from an all-star cast; "this family tragedy puts us near the edge of our seats and pulls us right along on its downward spiral" (William Arnold Seattle Post Intelligencer). Woody Allen returns in razor-sharp form with this "intense intelligently-written and directed" (Jeffrey Lyons Reel Talk) thriller that challenges how far a man should go in the name of family.System Requirements:Running Time: 109 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: PG-13 UPC: 796019810647 Manufacturer No: 81064 Reader Reviews One might wonder why Woody Allen has become so fascinated with setting his modern-day morality plays in England, rather than the US. Perhaps it is the enduring illusion of innocence or nobility that British accents still hold for we Americans: watching Ewan McGregor wrestle with the decision to commit murder is more unsettling than the moral struggles of Alan Alda in earlier Allen flicks, because Ewan has that cute little accent. Of course, human nature is human nature, and an accent won't serve as a get out of jail free card -- it'll just throw the audience off balance for a little while. On the face of it, Allen's 2007 film, "Cassandra's Dream," is very much like "Match Point from a couple of years earlier. In it, a handsome young Londoner wrestles with the decision to murder someone after realizing the the murder will (apparently) grant him his every desire. The struggle is primal and Biblical, and the audience gets queasy at the sight of such an elemental wrong being played out, methodically, under our very eyes. However, "Match Point" was a more skillful and alluring film -- although there are some differences, "Cassandra" feels very much like an alternate draft of the same story, or even a workshop for the earlier film. Apparently, cold-blooded homicide (this time with a Cockney accent) is a theme that Woody Allen is not quite ready to let go of, even if his audience may feel that they have already traveled down this road before. Ewan McGregor and co-star Colin Farrell turn in fine performances, with an able supporting cast, but still this morality play may have trouble connecting. Allen loyalists might enjoy seeing him direct another strong crime genre work, however, since it is interesting to see something that feels so completely un-Woody Allen-like, even if it does feel a bit redundant. (Joe Sixpack, Slipcue film reviews)

Cassandra's Dream Available from Amazon Price: $15.99 Updated on 8-27-2008.

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