A clumsy, clichéd morality play that may actually represent the lowest point of Allen’s recently chequered career.
Cassandra's Dream (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:113
Fresh:52
Rotten:61
Average Rating:5.7/10
Consensus: Colin Farrell and Tom Wilkinson act up a storm in Cassandra's Dream, but Woody Allen's heavy-handed symbolism and foreshadowing drains the plot of all tension.
Rated: 12A [See Full Rating] for thematic elements, some sexual material and brief violence.
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:23-05-2008
Synopsis: Woody Allen wrote and directed this London-set feature, a modern noir with black comic trimmings. Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor play working class brothers who dream of better things than their... Woody Allen wrote and directed this London-set feature, a modern noir with black comic trimmings. Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor play working class brothers who dream of better things than their respective mechanic and restaurant jobs. Hard-drinking Terry (Farrell) has a weakness for gambling, while brother Ian (McGregor) hankers for the finer things when he starts dating a very ambitious actress (Hayley Atwell). Fate deals a hand when their rich American uncle (Tom Wilkinson) slinks into London with a murderous proposition. Named for the boat the lads buy during a rare flush moment--a symbol of the morally compromising power of money and the inevitability, perhaps, of fate--CASSANDRA'S DREAM is another of Allen's loving looks at moneyed urbanites and their penchant for living out Greek tragedy, a la MATCH POINT and CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. This time around, it's a bit darker, but with Farrell and McGregor in the leads, there's plenty of star power. The lads are clearly having a ball acting under Allen's direction, and they're allowed to develop a charming, rapid-fire fraternal rapport that carries the film--along with Wilkinson's old-school gravitas and Atwell's luminous charisma. Phillip Glass composed the score. [More]
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Tom Wilkinson, Sally Hawkins
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Tom Wilkinson, Sally Hawkins, Hayley Atwell
Director: Woody Allen
Director: Woody Allen
Screenwriter: Woody Allen
Producer: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Gareth Wiley
Composer: Philip Glass
Studio: Weinstein Company
Reviews for Cassandra's Dream
If there is a black comedy hiding deep within the folds of this tragic tale, it is so subtly dissimulated that very few will ever manage to unveil it.
Disappointing, badly overwritten drama from Woody Allen, rendered almost unwatchable by dreadful Cockney accents from McGregor and Farrell.
The film stumbles in its convenient, obvious plot turns, even if much of this is meaningfully thought-provoking.
Woody Allen still insists on making movies at the rate of one a year, but he clearly needs to slow down. A lot.
Woody Allen's style here is expressly Hitchcockian. The tensions mounted and the ability of the narrative to focus on particular elements that end up meaning nothing put this film in league with the master of suspense.
If the condescending Allen doesn't offer a context for Ian and Terry's behavior it's because he feels covetousness is a given for the lower-class, and so Cassandra's Dream is simply content reprimanding the brothers for not knowing their place.
Scottish McGregor and Irish Farrell are not convincing as Brit siblings in Allen's pyschological thriller, which lacks irony or depth and can't decide how it wants to be taken by the audience, as melodrama, crimer, or serio-comic critique?
This is archly contrived nail-biter territory and an almost giddy strain on our nerves as Allen moves his hapless heroes from bad to far worse.
While Allen's Match Point was an interesting switching of gears ... his new mantle of Patricia Highsmith-esque crime chronicler is wearing thin as well.
If Frida Kahlo can paint 55 self-portraits, Woody Allen can make several versions of the same movie. It's only fair.
McGregor and Farrell deepen this slight thriller into a film that feels almost grandly philosophical, even though you know that when the lights come on, the spell will break
written with an archly intellectual perspective, but brought to poignant life by the actors
Like Match Point, [it] seems very sharp and focused; for better or worse, it lacks the tangents that both lightened up and diffused the tone in Scoop. That also means that there's not a moment of humor in it.
It’s wearying to watch Allen’s murder obsession when he doesn’t know how to dramatize morality.
CASSANDRA'S DREAM is a slow moving character thriller, that isn't always surprising, but for me was very involving. Woody has done it again!
Trying to balance the demands of his well-meaning motives with the requirements of the genre leaves Allen unsettled and ineffective, two words that encompass the creative drought evident in Cassandra's Dream.
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