I had never heard of this film, nor did I read anything about it on IMDb beforehand, so I had no expectations whatsoever when I sat down for it. By 20 minutes in, I was enjoying it a lot. Michelle Williams was putting on a London accent which seemed flawless to me. (Okay, I'm a Texan, what do I know about English accents?) The big event seemed to be done pretty well. The film is mainly psychological, about dealing with loss. Miss Williams does very well with this material, and indeed, her performance is the best part of the film. But when I got into the final third of the film, my enjoyment started to flag. The flashback scenes were way overdone, even though I get that it was the director's way of showing the character's break with reality. And in the end, the character's shocking naivete about the mindset of Islamic terrorists was extremely jarring. Overall, I liked the movie, but I am not sure that I could recommend it to anyone else.
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smatysia18 September 2016
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Seth_Rogue_One6 April 2016If you like me saw the poster (and the IMDb genre listing for that matter) and thought that this was a drama-thriller, let me tell you that it's not.
Although there are some slight moments of suspense this is solely a drama film about grief.
They do throw in some other elements to it as well, some that works better than others but the true essence of the story is a woman grief after a great tragedy in her life.
It tackles the subject-matter rather delicate for the most part and it does feel rather realistic for the more part.
It's rather depressing though, but I suppose that is the point.
Michelle Williams impresses by the sole fact she's able to sustain a British London accent throughout the movie and not once ever slip into a American one, which is extremely rare with American actors doing films in foreign English speaking countries but she had it down to perfection from beginning to end.
She also pulls a good performance over all as well.
So yeah not a feel-good movie that's for sure but it sustained my interested reasonably well, even though I don't know if I'd watch it again. -
hall8959 March 2011A young mother sees her husband and four-year old son off to a soccer match. She then goes home and puts the match on the television. As she watches there are explosions at the stadium. A terrorist attack kills her husband, who she didn't much like anyway, and her son, who she loved dearly, along with a thousand or so others. Oh, and as the young mother watches this unfold on the television screen she is at that moment having sex with another man.
This seems to set up a story about the young mother's guilt and grief. And there's some of that. But there's a bunch of other stuff too, none of which really works. There are conspiracy thriller elements which go practically nowhere. There are romantic entanglements as a couple of men who should really know better try to swoop in on the newly widowed young mother. In a portion of the film which strains credulity to the breaking point we see the young mother reach out to the son of one of the suicide bombers. The film goes off in so many different directions that it ends up being quite a mess. The young mother manages to hold herself together remarkably well given the circumstances. For a while anyway. But eventually she starts to crack and when she does the movie cracks too. At this point it is beyond repair.
If there is anything positive to say it is that, working from a rather lousy script, Michelle Williams still does remarkably well in the role of the young mother. Whatever little successes this movie has belong to Williams. Ewan McGregor is at least passable as one of her suitors. As the other Matthew Macfadyen is a total dud and he also draws the shortest straw, getting the absolute worst of all the film's terrible dialogue. Some of the things this character says are just laughably, impossibly bad. He speaks in a way human beings simply do not speak. The film aims for melodrama but misses the mark. The story doesn't really engage and it moves at a snail's pace. A story more focused on the mother herself and the way she coped with this tragedy might have worked. But this movie gets bogged down as it veers off in other directions. Williams does the best she can but her noble effort can't save this dud. -
Ricky_Roma__19 October 2008From the director of Bridget Jones' Diary comes a film about terrorism. If you think that sounds like a recipe for cinematic gold then you must be demented.
As you'd expect from someone who made such a wretched piece of fluff, the emotions here are laid on rather thick. This isn't a film that knows a whole lot about subtlety. They might as well have just issued a box of hankies at the door.
The film begins with an exceedingly cute child having fun with his mummy. He's so damn cute and so damn lovable that you know he's not going to make it through the film alive. And then when you realise that the film is called Incendiary, you know he's going to get blown into a million little pieces.
Now having your son die in a terrorist attack is bad enough, but the film decides to make it several degrees worse. First of all, the mother in this film is no longer that enamoured with her husband. Therefore their relationship is rather loveless. However, not to fear, a sleazy journalist played by Ewan McGregor pops up. And no sooner have they exchanged a few words than they're exchanging bodily fluids on the young mother's sofa. Crikey. And as they're humping and pumping, they have a football game on the television. And at this game are the woman's husband and young son. And would you believe it, as they're doing the dirty, the stadium goes ka-boom and it's goodbye husband and son.
After this you'd kind of think that the woman would suffer some pretty serious psychosexual problems. But this doesn't stop the woman from having sex with the head of the anti-terrorist unit (the woman's husband was in bomb disposal, so this guy was a work colleague). And this guy seems really nice. He just wants to look after her. Nevermind that he's dull as ditchwater and that he loves caravans. He's just a good, honest guy. Well, or so you'd think. I guess the woman should have noted the fact that the man has a beard, and as we all know, men with beards always have something to hide. Why else would they cover themselves in facial shrubbery? You see, the man knew that the terrorist attack was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Oh, that's pretty bad, isn't it? You were cheating on your husband as he went up in flames and now you've slept with the man who could have stopped it from happening. Maybe those psychosexual problems will finally kick in.
If this all sounds far-fetched, it's because it is. But the film isn't finished with the nonsense. The woman strikes up a friendship with the young son of one of the bombers. Okay, this has potential for bonding and mutual healing. But no, there's a sequence where the two of them are at Waterloo train station. The kid is still unaware that his daddy was one of the bombers he thinks he's just gone away and as he's waiting for the woman to buy tickets, he sees newspapers with his dad's face plastered all over them. Needless to say he's a bit upset and begins behaving a little erratically. He then runs away. The police see this and because he's Asian and has a backpack, they take chase. The woman chases as well, and they all end up on an empty train platform. Every party shouts a lot, and as the boy reaches into his jacket, the police prepare to shoot. But as a marksman pulls the trigger, the woman steps into his sights and gets shot in the head by mistake. Holy Jean Charles de Menezes, Batman, the police screwed up again!
But don't fear. The woman only gets grazed by a bullet so everything is hunky-dory.
Amongst all this ridiculous melodrama there are a few good scenes. The best one is when the mother seriously begins to lose the plot and thinks that her son has come back. She spends all her time in the flat playing with him. She then leaves to get some food and the spell is broken when she actually has some real human interaction. When she rushes back her son is no longer there and she's devastated.
However, this scene leads directly to another one of the film's maudlin flights of fancy. In response to the tragedy, a barrage balloon for every victim hangs in the sky with a picture of the victim on it. This to me sounds like an awful idea. Could you imagine that? You're just trying to get over the ordeal and you look out of the window and see your little Billy grinning from the sky. Yeah, nice one.
And so the woman realises that her son is really dead and decides to visit his barrage balloon. And to do so she has to stand on a tall roof and teeter on the edge. Will she kill herself or not? Now the barrage balloons I hated, but we now have another one of the film's few decent sequences. We see the boy and the father talking about the Great Fire of London. The boy asks what they did back then, and the father says that everyone had a cup of tea. We then have a voice-over where the woman says that many people have tried to destroy this city but no one has succeeded. Every time someone tries to knock it down, we rebuild. And that's what she's got to do with her life. She's got to rebuild it. The film didn't deserve to generate any emotion, but a love of my home city meant that for once I actually felt something in this preposterous movie. -
Rachael-Harper17 May 2019This is worth watching just for Michelle William's mesmerising performance and I'm not sure why it's been so panned by so many reviewers. The story is interesting, but it's more about emotions of lust, loss, guilt and reconciliation.
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ozanarslantas7827 March 2009I wonder if whose the babe the woman had at the end of the movie. may he be from reporter or his husband? the movie was really good. a good drama. the situation of the woman was terrible. while you having sex with another man your husband and son blew up. and you saw that explosion on TV while you were getting dirty with another man. Michelle Williams was very beautiful. and her acting was very realistic. and her inner voice that against Asama very meaningful. generally the movie was good. It does make me sad that I found this film so unenjoyable, because it was obvious that the director was very nervous and had put her soul and time into it's making.
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incitatus-org22 April 2009A young beautiful woman (Michelle Williams) is trapped in an empty marriage tucked away in an ugly apartment block in London. Her pride and joy in her grey existence is her 4-year-old son. One day, as the two of them are at the football match, she seduces a slick journalist Jasper (Ewan McGregor) in the local pub. As fate would have it, they are locked in a lovers embrace, with the football match raging on behind them on TV, when the stadium going up in flames with a series of explosions. Her husband and son are both killed in the terrorist attack, leaving her broken and alone.
If you are now thinking that a film about the aftermath of a major terrorist attack from the director of Brigit Jones' Diary sounds like a recipe for disaster, then you are partly right. But it is not bad for the reason you might think. The film is, for the most part, an emotional roller- coaster - you could be crying your way through most of it. But not because of her grieving for her lost family. The bombs are just the beginning - she still has to endure a full load of unlikely events in the hour to come. She understandably loses it along the way as the story becomes so over-dramatised that it is just ridiculous (especially when you run the story back in your head afterwards).
Towards the end she enters a phase of grief hallucination and reconciliation with life. As the movie is neither funny nor exciting, this should have been the route to take all along. Concentrating on the mourning of the young mother, and perhaps even throwing in some guilt towards her semi-estranged husband. Her husband is just gone with his death. He is not missed nor is there any regret for his disappearance. Even for a semi-estranged husband this sounds a little harsh - she did worry about him, after all, so she must have felt something. It is also curious that they have no family, or friends who drop by to comfort her. A lonely marriage must have pushed them into some kind of a social circle, or a hobby, or at least the occasional phone call with their mothers. Was their life really that lonely.
The movie is clearly intended as a pamphlet against terrorism, by showing the human cost at the level of ordinary people. It also takes the time to "explain" the resilience of London in a voice-over. It is a little desperate to save a movie through nationalism, but can actually be fit in here, although it could have been better prepared, by, for instance, by making her a more integral part of London. This is no masterpiece, nor an entertainment jewel, and can easily be missed altogether. A pity, because it does have some potential. -
martylee13045burlsink3424 January 2013At times difficult to watch drama functions brilliantly as showcase for Michelle Williams (the best performance of hers that I have yet seen) and an all too vivid examination of the perils and scars of living in the oh so dangerous and unsettled modern world.
Previous comments labeling the film melodramatic and unconvincing seem very off base to me. I agree that this material MIGHT have been pat and soap opera-ish in other hands, but for me the emotional and physical drama are riveting and superbly realized.
I will admit to some reservations about Williams's accent in early scenes...but soon became totally drawn in by the conviction of her performance. She is matched by a beautifully chosen and directed supporting cast.
All in all a very unfairly overlooked film with a very important message which should resonate deeply with anyone willing to open their heart to it. -
I was at the premiere of this film last night at the Sundance Film Festival. It was obvious that Sharon was very nervous, but she was gracious and funny and I could see how that transferred to her film Bridget Jones's Diary which I loved.
This, however, couldn't be further removed from that. To use one of Sharon's own terms, as a friend put it, the whole film was "eggy". Overdone, pleading with the audience to cry for sympathy for the main character. I don't really even know where to start. The little boy was adorable and precocious, almost to the point of being cartoon-like. Michelle Williams' hangdog "I'm sad and smoking a cigarette" schtick soon became old.
The film starts out alright enough, with the setup of the husband who's always working, the connection between mother and son, etc. Suddenly she is in bed with the very on-point Ewan McGregor, and a bomb explodes at the soccer stadium where her husband and son are. This moment is good - frightening, shocking. But the heavy overlays of jaunting piano music and slow motion running or crying or whatever are so saturated that it's impossible to really connect.
As most of us know, symbolism is best when subtle and stripped down. Well be prepared to have it wacked over your head in this film. Her son has a stuffed bunny animal that he always carries, and after he's dead of course this becomes the representation of her son. They reference the bunny so many times that it's no longer a special memento. Once she starts stalking the son of one of the suicide bombers, it just fails to make sense any longer. She predictably bonds with the son out of nowhere (I literally leaned over and said "She's going to buy him a cricket bat" to a friend after the boy mentioned his dad was supposed to buy him one for his birthday...and lo and behold, she did) and then suddenly there's a standoff at the train station where she gets apparently shot in the head and has not a scratch to show for it.
An additional thing that bothered me is her character apparently has all these amazing traits that men are dying for. Ewan seems suddenly "turned around" from a womanizing yuppie telling her that she's just so different from everyone he knows. Her husband's old boss tells her she's an amazing woman and spews ridiculous romantic crap about "laying in a caravan with the dust particles in the air" or "taking all the hundreds of pieces of your broken heart and putting it back together". What is so remarkable about this woman? She's just gone through a terrible loss, but that has nothing to do with her character or personality. Nothing shown tells me that she is deserving of this attention.
This combined with the in and out narration, apparently letters dedicated to Osama Bin Laden, the hot-air balloon with the picture of her son, the underuse of the engaging Ewan McGregor character, the random relationship with the bomber's son, and the obvious "Oscar nomination" scene of Michelle Williams screaming "My baby! My baby!" all comes together for one totally over the top melodrama that leaves the viewer with no real connection to anyone. If they had stripped it down by about 90% it would be watchable.
It does make me sad that I found this film so unenjoyable, because it was obvious that the director was very nervous and had put her soul and time into it's making. However, I don't see any way to fix the many glaring issues there are. Instead of seeing this, I would recommend popping in Bridget Jones's Diary and enjoying Sharon Maguire in her best medium. -
I went home and really appreciated the time I could spend with my young son after watching this. We played in the garden for at least an hour longer, everything he did was so much more vivid than if I had not watched this film. Many people have mentioned 'Melodrama' in their comments but usually with a sneer. Melodrama is not necessary a bad thing, it has a place if used well. This is a film about grief directed in the same manner as Bridget Jones. People who enjoyed Bridget Jones, Love Actually etc will find an emotional wrench with the mothers strength and weakness, as I did. A Mike Leigh type director would have made a very different film but that movie would have been unrelenting and harrowing by being much closer to the real life experiences of people suffering loss. I believe the filmmakers heart is in the right place and is not purposefully manipulating her audience. It must have taken much persistence and a strong belief to get this movie made, I imaging that it had a bumpy ride to get green lit. I'm glad they succeeded.
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Well Intentioned Post-Terror Musings on a Mother's Loss of Her Son (what grief there is for Her Husband is virtually absent) from, not one, but four, in tandem Suicide Bombers at a Stadium in London.
Extremely Heavy Handed and sometimes Incoherent and Rambling Story. Badly Edited, the Film seems Pasted Together from a Committee of Mentally Challenged Monkeys.
Things Happen without the Least Bit of Coherence (the middle with the Teenage Boy as one example) and the Triangle Romance is just Awkward and Distracting.
Michelle Williams in a Difficult Role is Ravaged by it all and spends most of the Movie completely Disheveled and Delusional, in Tears, Distressed, and Depressed. Then a Segment Pops Up where She is Completely Gone, Hallucinating and Detached from Reality.
The Biggest Problem is the Movie Never comes together and Appears Random and Rushed. The Music is just Awful and the Film is a Heavy Duty Downer.
It Needs a Finesse of the Heart and Soul. It Feels like it was made, Tossed in a Blender, and Released without Regard for its Deep Subject Matter and the Emotional Attachment that it would Demand from the Audience. -
a_difference-16 April 2009i think the main problem with the movie isn't the movie, it's that people are going in expecting a thriller instead of a drama. yes the major plot points could be covered in 5 minutes.. but that's not the point of drama. your average thriller is about things that happen and happen to have people in them. this movie is about the people and how they feel and cope when something momentous happens. if you appreciate that you'll appreciate the movie better, or not watch it cos it's not something that appeals to you.. and that's fair enough.
As far as the film goes, Michelle Williams carries it well. The accent's fine and the various states she goes through as she tries to deal with what has happened never feel you leaving disconnected or not understanding how she got there.
McGregor is his usual charming self, tho his is not really a major part (likewise MacFadyen), this is a movie about the mother and so these two don't get an awful lot of screen time.
The one fault i'd say is that the passage of time is not particularly well expressed particularly right at the end of the film when what seems to be a present day Ewan is wearing the exact same outfit as in the next scene which must be set sometime after.
Regardless, it's a decent movie, but requiring empathy.. so if you prefer action flicks, watch something else. -
Unlike most of the soft-headed liberals in Hollywood, this British film places the blame for Muslim terrorist attacks on.. guess who?..Muslims! Even more specifically, Osama Bin Ladin.
When a young London woman loses her 4 year old son and her husband in a Suicide Bomber attack at a sports arena, her whole world falls apart. Much of this is done with realism and sensitivity, even though it gets a bit muddled by the end. The moral might be that in times of extreme crisis, it pays to be a woman of incredible sexual magnetism, because then you'll have the able-bodied help of more than one handsome, anxiously willing man.
There's more than one reason to enjoy a movie. In this one, Montana-born Michelle Williams has an overload of sex appeal in every moment, in REAL ways, not in Mae West style phony baloney. Whether she's wearing casual or dress-up, loose or snug, cover-everything or cover little, happy, sad, playing with her kid, she has a magnetism most real men would do anything-at-all to get close to. Oh, and an effective actress too. I'd like to see more of this one. -
Incredibly slow. Long periods when they didn't find dialogue so filled it with repetitive monotonous piano music. A plot with a good centre but too many twists or 'devices' to be believable. Because of the tenuous plot, characters are more difficult to relate to or care about. Too many themes / subjects.
So I didn't like it much ! I thought the above was a succinct review but now IMDb is making me write 10 lines, which is ironically similar to how I feel about the film actually given all the long slow panoramic shots over music while the actors look sad or longingly or suchlike. So yes this paragraph is just for that end, sorry everyone, but this review is less time than the film, so it's of some value. Ha ! -
Gordon-1118 April 2009This film is about a woman who lost her husband and son in a terror attack. Her life goes into a mess as she deals with her loss and hunts for the truth.
I have mixed feelings for "Incendiary". On one hand, it is beautifully shot. Every scene is nicely planned and constructed. Camera work is great too. On the other hand, the plot is confusing and strange. The pacing is excruciatingly slow, with a lot of repetitive scenes (such as London burning).
I also think "Incendiary" is not focused enough, as it tries to deal with too many topics including grief, guilt, quest for truth and the road to healing. If the filmmakers only focused on grief and guilt, without the subplots of the anti-terrorist guy or the suspect's family, I would have enjoyed the film more. Despite of Michelle Williams' superb acting, I find "Incendiary" disappointing and boring. -
texasguy11363-15 July 2009First, let me say that I'm not usually into these types of film. I prefer the popcorn movies with lots of action and not too much to think about. Every once in a while, however, I'll rent a "high-brow" movie and often I am bored to tears. Not with this movie. I am unfamiliar with most of Michelle Williams work, but she does an excellent job here displaying a woman dealing with a deep guilt, and remorse over the loss of her son (she doesn't seem to miss her husband much, however- but I digress). I honestly believe that if you cannot relate to her character here, then you are a soul-less creature and definitely have forgotten the tragedies of 9-11-2001. Terrorism is just murder on a grand scale, and murder benefits no one. Grief is universal. Go back into your caves and let those who still have the capacity to feel relish in the tragedy portrayed by an up-and coming actress. See this one!
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Incendiary (2008)
A kind of British version of 9/11 that is interesting for its vision of a London-based terrorist disaster, but which is overwrought, sentimental, and sensational. It tries to temper this by making the heroine moodily (deeply) unhappy in her adultery (or unhappy enough to be adulterous), and by having the resulting relationship take on surprising seriousness.
And this is where the movie has some interest. I'm not sure Michelle William's role as the mother and bereaved is exceptional any more than Ewan McGregor is as the interloper playboy turned sensitive (and who has a really minor role). Both seem like functionary clichés. It's a serious movie overall, and increasingly sad. But it's loaded with tricks to make it catchy, including the whole unconvincing second half where an investigation takes place against unlikely odds.
The music is overbearing (drippy strings and piano), and the manipulations almost cheap (stuffed animals, pictures and movies of loved ones), almost like a quickie made-for-TV affair. Which is too bad because there are other aspects that are moving. It's a good idea to have the British visit this and try to empathize through a movie this way.
A giveaway to its motivations (and those of the director Sharon Maguire) is a voice-over at the end, as a baby is being born, that is a direct plea to Osama Bin Laden to stop training people to be violent killers. We all wish that would be so. So if this movie is just for Osama, fine. For the rest of us, it's nearly unbearably trite and shameless. -
jax71312 August 2010The thing I abhor most about selecting an unfamiliar movie from the rental or bargain bins is being lied to by the copywriters who decorate the DVD case with descriptions that have nothing to do with the movie. This film was the last straw and I will no longer choose movies I know nothing about based on the cover blurbs.
I was in the mood for a thriller - the most prominent word on the DVD case - and the promise of a gripping terrorist theme with a woman at the center of a police investigation was right up my alley. Instead, I was presented with a somber, slow moving, often disjointed story with weak character development and periodic attempts at artistic visuals. Though all of the acting was very good, it did not make up for the empty plot tangents that dragged down the pace nor did it improve the frequent sappy dialog.
This movie is one long whine about a lonely woman's grief and guilt, a supposedly very ordinary woman who nevertheless is the object of desire of many men and who has not even one relative or friend in the world. Despite the hopeful ending, a sad movie that really doesn't take you anywhere or reveal any new insights means I've wasted my time. Only 2 out of 10 stars for the acting and the cinematography. -
kenjha26 December 2012An adulterous British woman tries to cope with the loss of her husband and infant son to a terrorist bombing at a soccer match. This film is a complete disaster, failing on all levels. The main problem is a script that seems to have no rhyme or reason and becomes increasingly dreary. The woman suffers from delusions and has random relationships with a reporter and a colleague of her husband's, but none of it is the least bit interesting. Williams is certainly a talented young actress but this is arguably her worst performance. She sports a thick Cockney accent that may be authentic sounding, but is also annoying and nearly incomprehensible.
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shultzl17 December 2008I have seen a negative review on this movie and I have to say that I am very tired of people picking apart movies to show how smart they think they are! This was a tragic and beautifully filmed movie that reminded me so much of The Sweet Hereafter. I believe that some people have a hard time watching others go through tragedy and grief and are uncomfortable expressing themselves. This movie drew a lump to my throat the size of a golf ball and made me hug my son extra hard at bedtime. Michelle Williams gives another outstanding performance and Ewan MacGregor is, as always, a complete pleasure to watch on screen. This film will come out on DVD this year and I would urge anyone with a heart to embrace it.
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This is an odd but engaging film about the aftermath of a suicide-bombing in London that essentially blows itself up in the end. Just like a normal day shattered by a terrorist explosion, this movie gets you to invest a bit of your heart and mind in it and then breaks completely apart, leaving you stunned and wondering what the hell happened.
Michelle Williams plays a young mother who's drifted away from her policeman husband (Nicholas Gleaves). He works in bomb disposal and the demand of his job consumes him, leaving her with just their young son (Sidney Johnson). The boy becomes everything to his mother. Well, not quite everything. What she can't get from her son, she heads out to a pub to get from a journalist named Jasper Black (Ewan McGregor).
One day, Jasper and the young mother are having sex in her home while her husband and son are at a soccer match. They fornicate while the match plays on TV, stopping only when the soccer stadium erupts into smoke, screams and booming death. It turns out six Muslim suicide-bombers attacked the stadium and killed over a thousand people, including the young mother's husband and son.
Now, here's where the story gets a little weird. Jasper discovers that the authorities are concealing the identity of one of the bombers, but doesn't know the reason why. After setting up that mystery, though, the film totally ignores it for a long time and dwells instead on the young mother dealing with her grief. She actually befriends the son of the hidden bomber (Usman Khokar) and even starts up a relationship with the head of London's anti-terror unit (Matthew Macfayden), who turns out to have had a crush on her for years. Then just as you think the movie has forgotten about the mystery and it won't be important to the story, it re-emerges and sets off a chain of events that lead to a final 15 minutes or so of the film that are so stupid and nonsensical that I couldn't believe what I was watching. Let me put it this way - Incendiary concludes with narration from the young mother, reading from a letter she wrote to Osama Bin Laden about how she's not really angry with him anymore and basically wishes they could hug it out. And that's not the dumbest thing in the last part of this movie.
I've seen a lot of bad films with bad endings. I don't think I've ever seen a good film that ends as badly as Incendiary. As the story careened to a finish, I literally said out loud "You've got to be kidding me!" on several different occasions. The awfulness is magnified by how much I liked the rest of the movie. Michelle Williams is quite good as someone equally consumed by grief, guilt and longing. There's also a fairly wise theme running through the story where British resilience in the face of Hitler's missiles in WWI is held up as an example of how to deal with modern terrorism. Yet, all of it turns to crap because of Incendiary's atrocious closing.
The best description of this film can be found in an episode of South Park. Eric Cartman spends the first half of the show with a giant, alien satellite dish going into and out of his ass. He describes the sensation as taking an enormous dump and then having that colossal turd shoot back up into your body. That's what Incendiary is like. It feels good and then it feels really, really, really, strangely bad. -
jules-10821 August 2008This cod mockney melodrama from the director of Bridget Jones Diary fails at every level. It's clearly a film involving working class characters made by middle class people with both characters and plot lacking any authenticity and credibility whatsoever. In fact, the basic premise of Bridget Jones is transposed to this disastrous attempt at making a serious drama. Instead of writing a diary she writes letters to Osama Bin Laden. Instead of getting caught in a love triangle between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant she gets caught in a love triangle with two equally wet englishmen, uncomfortably played by Ewan MacGregor and Matthew Macfadayen, and all this, after her poor husband and son have been blown to bits in an unconvincing attack on Arsenal football stadium whilst she was shagging the local taloid newspaper reporter! The mawkish sentimentality that ensues is unbearable. In a preposterous celebration of London's blitz spirit, the faces of the victims are printed on the side of WWII air balloons which float above the city in every shot. And Michelle Williams, who miraculously found her sons toy rabbit in the ruins of the football stadium, clutches it to her chest in almost every scene. I find it hard to believe that this ill conceived script ever made it past treatment stage, particularly when so many established UK film companies like CH4 were involved in its development and finance. I find it equally hard to believe that the film was selected to screen at prestigious festivals like Sundance.This film is a worrying indictment of the failings of a the British film industry.
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girlocelot31 July 2009I've got good news, & I've got bad news.
The good? Michelle is very fine - convincing sad mommy, Barbie cute, emoticon deluxe. E.McG - not around enough. There must have been an editing mess with this one. The first part of the film suggests he would have had a bigger role. Our loss.
The bad? THIS IS NOT AN ACTION MOVIE!!!! It's a ruminative, junky, maudlin, meandering mess masquerading as an action movie. No guts, no punch. It takes a long time to say - & you will be half asleep at this point - that, gee, Osama should just listen to the sad mommas out there & he wouldn't be such a bad dude. Aww!
NO. This is idiotic. Terrorists are NOT good daddies. Not possible.
The whole thing takes a long time to develop & then falls apart in bathetic babbling. -
wangxian522 May 2014To me, this is one of those "love it or hate it" movies.
I started watching this movie because I adore Matthew Macfadyen. I note that some reviewers said they also watched it because they liked one of the main actors.
However, even this adoration couldn't carry me through the whole movie. The plots and sub-plots were too bizarre and after 45 minutes, I stopped watching. Then I tried to continue for another 15 minutes but eventually abandoned it altogether. No, I don't want to know what happened to her in the end.
I gave this movie 2 stars, one each for Matthew Macfadyen and the director for trying.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch an episode of Spooks, or maybe Homeland. -
jamalhugo7 November 2009The story of a woman grieving over the loss of her husband and son, seems like a story that should not be told, it felt like every scene was just watching her crying and having flashbacks. On the other hand, scenes were very well done, and clear at some points, very good special effects too. I have to say though, this is by far the worst movie I have seen, or at least, I can recall seeing. The whole story looks like repetition, and then the mystery to be revealed of how everything happened is very badly done, it is easily guessed, not in any way clever, and pointless. I do not recommend this movie to anyone, it is appalling.