Journey to the End of the Night (2006)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Just perfect...

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

If you ever doubted the impact that music has on movies just listen to Elia Cmiral's score in this film. From the titles on, it creates the perfect mood for this dark thriller set amongst the urban sprawl of Brazil's São Paulo.A combination of elements makes this movie seem better than it really is. Although it has a setting that is more likely to crop up on World Movies with sub-titles, I was surprised to find that it starred Brendan Fraser and Scott Glenn, and is in English for the most part.The film is set over the course of a single night. Sinatra (Scott Glen) runs a brothel in São Paulo. After inadvertently coming into possession of a large quantity of drugs, he is about to make a deal with a Nigerian gang, the proceeds of which will allow him to live comfortably in the US with his wife, former prostitute Angie, and their young son. He has the drugs, and the Nigerians have the money. He intends to hand the brothel over to his older son, Paul (Brendan Fraser). However Paul plans to hijack the deal and steal the money for himself. The plan starts to unravel when Sinatra's Nigerian go-between is killed; the Nigerian gang will only deal with a Nigerian. Sinatra enlists Wembe (Mos Def), a Nigerian dishwasher from the brothel to take the drugs to the gang and return with the money.This arrangement sets off a great deal of paranoia especially in Paul. Then, in the best traditions of the genre, chance intervenes to disrupt everyone's plans. Before the fade out, we are shown that there really isn't much honour among thieves especially down São Paulo wayThe setting is used to great effect and we get a feeling for the dangerous side of São Paulo. This obscures the fact that there are some fairly standard action scenes, and the downbeat finale also seems fairly standard for this kind of film. Brendan Fraser as Paul, taps his inner bad for this role – addicted to gambling and cocaine, in one scene he slices off the earlobes of a transvestite after a fight, and in another, to prove he is beyond redemption, he has an old man's dog shot.Scott Glenn always brings depth to his roles. He gains sympathy for his character despite the fact that he is not only a brothel owner, but has now also become a major drug dealer – showing how easily movies can distort values.The only character to emerge with dignity is Wembe, an unlikely hero who sticks to his word despite everyone's doubts, and attacks from all sides on the streets of the city.The film is worth a look just for the fact that a fairly typical plot has been transferred from the mean streets of Los Angeles or New York to the even meaner streets of São Paulo.

This movie is set in Brazil Brendan Fraser is the son of a pimp that owns a nightclub and they are trying to move a deal forward that is risky and has a lot hanging in the balance. The characters are very richly done with lots of tension over a deal and the entire movie revolves around it.A number of characters accidentally cross each other's path and wind up influencing each other and I enjoyed that part of it as well. This is a dark and violent movie but very well acted and a decent script that has an attention to detail you don't normally see these days.The only part I didn't like about the movie is it was unrealistic when Brendan's character actually cared what a fortune teller had to say- it's hard to believe a hardened criminal would worry about what he had to say for a second.

Journey to the End of the Night is garbage.I picked out this stinker in a hurry. The synopsis on the DVD cover seemed interesting at first glance. Scott Glenn was in it. But most of all it was set in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Exotic locations fascinate me. Big mistake! The plot revolves around the owner of a brothel (Glenn) and his degenerate son (Brendan Fraser). The clueless pair stumble across a suitcase full of heroin, plot to sell it and divide the loot. We soon find out the coke-head son plans to double-cross his father. The tale is complicated by the sudden, unexpected death of their co-conspirator, a cocaine-launderer whom the father replaces with a dishwasher he hastily recruits from his brothel's kitchen. The story goes downhill from there.The plot is shot full of holes. As a consequence, I was tempted to pull the DVD and watch cable news. Instead I stuck it out. Another big mistake.Virtually every character in the movie is brain-dead and morally twisted. Fraser and his cronies are about as stupid and believable as the Keystone Cops or the Three Stooges. There is no character development, possibly because characters drop in and out of the story for no apparent reason (destiny?). Consequently, the action is contrived. Predictably, a bunch of characters are destined to be bullet-ridden, but by the end of the film, who really cares?To make matters worse, the script is a poorly written piece of junk. Characters repeat themselves time and time again, either because the writer thinks we're as dumb as his characters or he wanted the film to last more than five minutes. As a result, the actors either sleepwalk (Glenn) through their role or play it so over the top (Fraser) as to be farcical. All the other actors similarly struggle with the poor script and weak plot.What is the point of this pretentious tripe? It's hidden, no doubt, somewhere in the taglines ("You can escape anything but your destiny," and "Where life is cheap... and hope is priceless."). If you can make something out of that nonsense, you're wiser than I. This movie is pure fluff.Oh, and since all the action takes place at night, Sao Paulo, Brazil is nothing but a dark, yellow-orange blur. They could have filmed this crap under sodium vapor lights in the streets of East LA and you couldn't tell the difference.I rate it one star because this dreary journey is thankfully short and finally does end.

A Director Searching for his Signature, March 3, 2007 Reviewer: Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviewsFor those of us who found much to admire and appreciate in Eric Eason's 2002 little powerhouse of a film MANITO that placed Franky G in the limelight as a sound actor inside that hunky exterior, the release of JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT held much promise. Unfortunately with moving into the arena of 'major features' with popular big actors in a script that is deeply in need of surgery proves a step too quickly taken. While it is easy to see Eason's intentions in this very dark (literally!) film, it is compulsively doctored with phony 'reality ideas' that misfire.The basic story is a family of Americans who are deeply involved in the crime scene (brothels) of São Paulo, Brazil, intricately bound in their crime acts but both planning to escape the quagmire of the dingy life of the city and return to America. The father Sinatra (Scott Glenn) is living with Angie (Catalina Sandino Moreno - the star of 'Maria Full of Grace') and they have a small child: Sinatra's son Paul (Brendan Fraser) is also in love with Angie and plans an escape from the dregs of Sao Paulo after he manages to work a drug pass engineered by his father. The sale is to Nigerians who speak Yoruba and when the 'messenger' meant to pass the drugs for the money abruptly dies in a brothel with a transgender prostitute, the panic begins: who can make the pass that night? Sinatra hires a Nigerian, Yoruba speaking dishwasher Wemba (Mos Def) who agrees to take the drugs to the drop site and it seems Wemba is the only decent character to keep his bargain and his word. Paul is enraged with the death of the original middleman and ends up disfiguring the prostitute present at his death. The drug deal falls into problems, Paul is unable to convince Angie to stand by him (which mean leaving Paul's father and the possible endangerment of her son), and things bog down plot-wise so that story ultimately ends with the only persons to care about are Angie and Wemba.Eason makes his story all happen in one night and the constant factor is a greenish darkness that hides almost everything - and that may be a good thing! The script is Swiss cheese, the acting is for the most part sadly directed, the cast is poorly chosen, and the only real redeeming factor is the chance to watch Mos Def continue to flesh out his career with well executed character roles. Eric Eason holds much promise as a director (he was the awarded best emerging filmmaker by first annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in 2002), so perhaps this excursion into the 'big screen realm' can be forgiven as overstepping his material. In the end JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT is hopefully just a sidestep for a director who obviously has considerable talent. Grady Harp