Levity (2003)

Waste of time

The greatest movie ever made..!

A Brilliant Conflict

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I will admit first that I didn't pay full attention to this film when it was on, but this directorial debut from Men in Black and Bill & Ted writer Ed Soloman looked alright. Basically Manuel Jordan (Billy Bob Thornton) killed a teenager while attempting a robbery, and after 23 years he has been released from prison. He is hoping to find redemption returning to his home city, and he ends up working for preacher Miles Evans (Morgan Freeman) in a community house. He also becomes friends with the sister of his victim, Adele Easley (Holly Hunter), hoping to be forgiven. He also has interactions with a famous singer's druggie daughter, Sofia Mellinger (Kirsten Dunst), with no adult responsibility. That's really all the story I got. Also starring Dorian Harewood as Mackie Whittaker, Geoffrey Wigdor as Abner Easley, Luke Robertson as Young Abner Easley, Billoah Greene as Don, Manuel Aranguiz as Senor Aguilar and Catherine Colvey as Claire Mellinger. I'm sure if I was watching properly I could give the performances and the film itself better credit, but I guess what I did see was enough. Worth watching!

This movie could be the basis of a great TV series. Few shows address the religious issues the way this movie does.TV series could be based around the community center the young heroine has now inherited and her ongoing struggles to keep it open. Also a great opportunity for many guest roles centered around the characters from the neighborhood. Plots could center around things like:Love interest with black gang leaderNeed to mediate gang violence in the neighborhoodGetting authority figures to allow someone so young to operate community centerDealing with red tape required to operate a charityRepresenting young kids with police, courts, and neighborhood businesses

I don't care what anybody says. I thought these was one of the only films so beautiful in form and attractive in style worth commenting on (besides i comment pure 10s). It is a beautiful story about a man that looks at life after having regretfully sined and figures that in his life, the sin he committed is so wrong, he will never be redeemed, no matter how sorry, or sad or repented he is upon his sin. the beauty of the movie is that it slips behind you and leaves him with the path to ascension before his eyes, proving that no matter the sin, repent and redemption is possible if the soul asks for it and that is what makes this movie oh so beautiful.With superb acting and directing and an amazingly extremist, harsh yet true look at life that acts as a dagger to the heart of the watcher who knows what he's looking for. Unexplainably good, just lets say tears fell out of my eyes, but not because it was sad, more around its excellence which i believe deserves a room besides those humanistic movies that simply explain just how people are deep down: not quite so bad.

Sorry, Noel - the reason "why this misses the mark for so many people" isn't any of the clever reasons you give - it's because, quite simply, the film is unadulterated crap. A waste of some of the finest talents Hollywood has to offer. And a waste of the evening I spent watching it when I hired it out on DVD, misled by comments like yours that I would find more in it that met the eye of the mainstream media reviewers who originally gave it the thumbs down. The film tries to be very clever by concealing from you what is really going on, and does this so well (or badly, depending on your perspective) that you are well into it before you realise that, in fact, nothing is going on at all.