PARTITION

India 1940s. The British are leaving and violence erupts between Muslims and Sikhs, rather than Hindus. Another setting for Romeo and Juliet. You know there will be no happy ending. There never has been in a film touching these issues.

The story moves along fairly smoothly, although some scenes feel a bit jumpy in that they're short. It sounds almost like a Hollywood soundtrack. The plot is a bit simple too, that outside of the initial dispute, everything gets resolved almost a little too easily, and the end is almost physically unbelievable, without giving away what happens, you'll have to see for yourself.

Overall, it's an enjoyable film, if you'll pardon the lack of political correctness in choice of words. One forgets from time to time that Kristin Kreuk is not actually Indian, but the two leads are well played. The best scene in the film? At the train station where they're separated by the train tracks, a meaningful setting complimenting the title and one of the main themes.

THE PAINTED VEIL

This offering by Ed Norton and Naomi Books is based on a book, a book I have on the shelf, but I haven't read it. The trailer looked promising and the film didn't disappoint. The love story that happens after marriage is a different take from other current romantic drama releases and the mix of period and foreign land makes this a beautiful film to watch and you come to care about the characters. They don't start off that great, and unfortunately that's the only low point of the film, no matter how bad Walter and Kitty are, you don't hate them. You don't go feeling from one extreme to the other.
The chemistry does seem to be there as the two characters slowly begin to get reacquainted, asking us too to reponder about our own relationships with people, what new things we can learn about them, what didn't we know about them before and how our new knowledge and understanding can change us. And ultimately, it is understanding that we can forgive everything and that some things really don't matter so long as we believe in it.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Yet another review that's taken me awhile to get to. "The Good Shepherd" is yet another film where the trailer makes the film seem better than it really is. Giving off tempos of a spy thriller like Matt Damon's previous films, "The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremacy", "The Good Shepherd" is more a look at the life of one man who got recruited for intelligence and then chose to remain in the field of intelligence, where anything can be sacrificed including his family.
The film flips between the past and the present much like an informant is on both sides of the law, living in crime while reporting to the law. The past becomes lost in this tango, losing any audience attention with the characters. Nobody ends up really caring about the family, Angelina Jolie seems to have been overcasted, she's got a fairly small role, more of a pretty face this time around.
Perhaps it would have been a better film had it been two, one focusing on the past, one on the present, or perhaps just one timeline. The mystery Damon's character has to solve in the present storyline is who betrayed his operation, but you figure it out fairly easily once a few clues are revealed.
Bottom line: if you go in expecting an thriller flick, you'll be disappointed, otherwise, one might be interested in this film.