Review: Cassandra’s Dream

Scotsman Ewan McGregor and Irishman Colin Farrell play two working class London brothers somewhat financially hard up but full of dreams. Farrell wants to buy a house for his girlfriend (a blonde Sally Hawkins), but is a ne’er do well gambling fuck up of a human being. McGregor for his part wants money to move to California with his beautiful but high maintenance actress girlfriend (Hayley Atwell). When a visiting uncle (Tom Wilkinson) with money and Hollywood connections comes to ask a favour of them, they see this as the answer to their prayers. All he asks is that they murder a colleague who has dirt on him that could ruin him. Once the deed is done, the increasingly ambitious McGregor seems to be enjoying himself, but poor Farrell takes to drinking and a serious bout of guilt. He just can’t live with what they’ve done, and it has the potential to make things difficult for McGregor and Wilkinson in the process.

 

I hadn’t even heard of this Woody Allen (“Deconstructing Harry”, “Annie Hall”, “Hannah and Her Sisters”) film 2008 before seeing it, and to be honest I can see why (And not just because it was strangely released direct-to-DVD here). It’s an unremarkable and ultimately uneven film that doesn’t outwardly present itself as a typical Woody Allen film. But I’ve seen a lot worse from Woody, and it’s a pretty bleak and tragic film (and not terribly amusing at all), just not a wholly successful one. I liked it a bit more than his overrated (but much more well-known) “Match Point”, which it shares a few cosmetic similarities. For starters, neither film gives off any Woody Allen vibes at all beyond the opening credits and Woody’s familiar font of choice. Anyone could’ve directed this material. For some like me, that’s not immediately a bad thing.

 

At first Colin Farrell seems a bit wasted but he really does win you over by the end, with a tragic (almost of the Greek variety) performance. Once his character truly starts to crack, the versatile actor’s talent really does show through. Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell, meanwhile are such charismatic and likeable actors that you might not even notice that they actually aren’t very likeable here at all. That said, I wasn’t so sure Atwell was so high maintenance so much as McGregor, in trying to impress her, kept talking himself up and buying up big. Sure, she seems to enjoy it, but to me it said more about his insecurity than anything else. McGregor’s character’s progressing ruthlessness actually kinda sneaks up on you a bit by the end of the film. It’s not so much that he’s an evil person, it’s just that one evil action starts the train moving and he’s on a trajectory that’s hard for him to stop, really. He’s probably just as shocked at himself as we are shocked with him. Atwell, meanwhile, certainly fares much better in British films than American crud like “Captain America”, and is very pretty too. She’s really good, and certainly better than Scarlett Johansson in “Match Point”. Probably the best work I’ve seen from her, actually. Sally Hawkins is here too...I wish she wasn’t. Her inarticulate manner of speech is nails on a chalkboard to me. She seems smart enough to not speak in such a manner, but like Jamie Oliver, persists with the cockney gangster accent nonetheless. It suits the character sometimes, but she speaks this way in every film. Like Brenda Blethyn and Julie Walters before her, I just can’t take to the woman, but thankfully her character is somewhat on the periphery here. I think Tom Wilkinson is a tad overrated, but he’s certainly solid, and is very much so here.

 

The material is more interesting and less predictable than “Match Point”, but although watchable, it meanders for a bit. It’s quite scary how things snowball out of control, though, I just wish it was overall better than it is. I think I still like it more than most seem to, though. It might be one of the more ‘normal’ films Woody has ever done, if one can really call it ‘normal’. Just a strange choice of subject for such an esteemed and lauded filmmaker. I’m not quite sure what was going on with Woody around 2005-2008, but at least this isn’t pretentious or irritating. It just seems to indicate a filmmaker struggling to find his place in a world (cinema) he arguably once ruled. But at least in this case, he’s not putting out something tedious, irritating, or pretentious. Just...passable.

 

Rating: B-