MovieChat Forums > Damage (1993) Discussion > What am I missing??! I thought this mov...

What am I missing??! I thought this movie was incredibly weak.

posted 17 years ago by cjhusky
9 replies | jump to latest

I have had this movie laying around for a good long time and had tried to watch it several times, but it was so incredibly slow I could never make it a good way into it. Last night I finally bucked up and decided I'd give it a solid try and watched it beginning to end.

It's currently 6.6/10, which personally I think is about 3-4 point too high. This movie was a complete snooze. I did not read the book, which I'm assuming much be much better in characeter development and hopefuly plotline, but this thing was painful to watch...And I don't mean "painful" in the sense of me feeling for the characters or the storyline, but in trying to sit thru it.

I gave it a 4 and that was a stretch, based solely on the performance of Miranda Richardson. She is incredibly talented, her character was somewhat believable, she did an excellent job with a weak script,...oh, and she is drop dead gorgeous.

Irons was mediocre and Juliette was below average. Nothing jumped out about this film except that it seemed unrealistic fro the start. The whole animal magnetism without speaking thing is so non-sensical I don't know where to start. There is little to no character development, the plotline/storyline is so predictable and there is virtually nothing to it. It's hollow and goes no where. I feel like I wasted the better part of 2 hours if it wasn't for seeing Miranda's efforts.

What am I missing?

[–] persistenceofvision 17 years ago

Whatever it is, I'm missing the same thing because I thought it was bloody awful: thin, annoying characters I didn't care about (like pretty much every David Hare movie I've ever seen). The only thing that kept me watching was the prospect of a shag happening every 3-4 minutes.

[–] JacquesDemy 17 years ago

The accidental death ruined the story. The ending is great.

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] PoppyTransfusion 13 years ago

I too found the story cold and (almost) uninteresting. I think that what spoilt it for me was Anna's character, which didn't work. There was a big contrast between how Anna acted in the sex scenes (very typically Binoche) compared to the non-sex scenes (not a typical character for Binoche, so she was not quite affecting enough). The two were too disparate to make sense as a whole person.

Miranda Richardson, as many others have remarked, was the best character in the film and her acting credible. For this I rate it 6 rather than 4 or 5. I found Irons to be quite good but physically repulsive.

my vessel is magnificent and large and huge-ish

[–] bron-tay 12 years ago

If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage, and believe me, this one ain't on the page either.

Josephine Hart fooled some critics and readers with her first book, but afterwards no one bit. Her subsequent books were called pretentious, relentlessly aphoristic, self-parodist, frustrating, irrational. She was discovered to be a one-note writer, and that one note not very deep.

Viewers trying to make sense of these characters' motivations and actions should give up. There's no there there and there never was. Go read some of the low reviews at Amazon and you'll see you are right in tune with plenty of readers.

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Please put some dashes above your sig line so I won't think it's part of your dumb post.

[–] CoSMiGoNoN 11 years ago

You're not missing anything: The whole premise is ludicrous, the sex scenes are overacted and cartoonish, and the death scene is laughable.

[–] Brandos_Bitch 10 years ago

No, this was pretty terrible. The characters completely unsympathetic and boring, the plot was slow as molasses, and very soap opera-ish, and the ending..my god, that ending when the son falls to his death after seeing them fack has to be the most over the top dramatic, and yet unintentionally funny things Ive seen in a while.

Terrible movie, even with great actors like Irons and Binoche.

"When life presents you with lemons, squeeze out the juice and squirt it in your enemies eyes."

[–] !!!deleted!!! (46827070) 9 years ago

It was great because the characters were so realistic.
Film-makers often make guilt a big deal.
Whereas this film was great at showing guilt often doesn't play a role in affairs.
Humans often don't have much of a conscience, and this film was great at showing that.

[–] prplayer 8 years ago

you're not missing anything, i found it repetitive and shallow

so many movies, so little time