360

360 is one of those films that has top drawer credentials in every department yet manages to fail to make much of them. The essential problem is the script by noted English screenwriter Peter Morgan, responsible for the marvellous Frost/Nixon  amongst other titles, who does not bring off its conceit of demonstrating the inter-connectivity of its characters (and, by extension, of us all in our respectively worlds) in any believable way. It’s an appealing idea and one wants it to work but this supposed slice of life is too storybook neat to take place anywhere but in a writer's imagination and generically photogenic to take place anywhere but on a movie screen.

The first 20 minutes or so of the film work quite well as Jude Law’s English businessman in Vienna books, but stands up, an Eastern bloc hooker (Lucia Siposova) whilst, back home, his wife (Rachel Weisz) bangs a handsome Brazilian photographer whose beautiful girlfriend (Maria Flor) finds out and leaves him. The centralizing theme of infidelity/fidelity works to set up an intriguing opening premise but thereafter the film spirals outward and takes in the stories of a Arab dentist who lusts after the wife of a Russian Mafia boss bodyguard, a taciturn sex offender (Ben Foster) and a garrolous Englishman (Anthony Hopkins) travelling to Arizona to examine the remains of what might be his daughter and so on and so forth until we sort of get back to where we started from à la 360 degrees (well, sort of, as the sleazy pimp appeared to have gotten himself shot in the hotel while robbing the Mafia boss so I don't know if that voice is his or his replacement, not that it matters).

There’s a sort of over-arching theme of encountering forks in the road of life and the choices we do or don’t make but it’s handled so superficially that one can't invest in it in any meaningful way. The film looks good and the marquee cast has appeal but if you want to see this sort of thing done with real credibility check out Johnnie To’s Life Without Principle which was released the same year.

 

Want something different?