360 (PG)

Time Out says

Tue Aug 7 2012

In Peter Morgan’s script for 2010’s ‘Hereafter’, a glimpse of the beyond linked disparate individuals across the globe: this time his notional modernisation of playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s warhorse ‘La Ronde’ is the catalyst for an international chain of interpersonal connections. Following a cash-strapped young Slovakian woman (Lucia Siposová) to Vienna, we meet an errant English businessman, Michael (Jude Law), and through him the story moves to London, where his faithless spouse (Rachel Weisz) has a liaison with a young Brazilian (Juliano Cazarré) – whose complicated love life in turn whisks us even further afield.

Since Morgan (‘The Queen’) is a capable miniaturist, the performers are decent enough and Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (‘City of God’) has an eye for colour-supplement chic, it’s pleasant enough viewing. The overall design, however, is a shaky construction, since we never spend enough time to bond with each participant, and no matter how much the film tries to draw out a key theme about the significance of making your own decisions in life, it’s only too obvious its outcomes are all skewed by the storyteller’s contrived need to keep adding links to the daisy chain of his story. As the meet-cutes and air miles rack up, there’s little sense of increasing momentum or escalating stakes, just more of the same mini-melodramas. Anthony Hopkins makes the most of his spot playing a recovering alcoholic, while twitchy Ben Foster seriously overdoes it as a wavering former sex-offender.

‘360’ is classy but utterly amorphous, and that seemingly benign title gives far too much away.

Author: Trevor Johnston