Amazon.com: If Wim Wenders falls prey to overambition in this sprawling story of identity, conscience, and voyeurism in modern Los Angeles, it pays off in a richness absent from so many of Hollywood's safe, sterile films. Bill Pullman is the ostensible hero, a Roger Corman-like producer abruptly kidnapped by a pair of dim thugs who prepare to kill him in the shadow of the L.A. freeway. Gabriel Byrne watches, powerless, from on high, a meek Big Brother wired up through surveillance cameras hidden throughout the city. When Pullman disappears into the faceless population of L.A., adopted by a family of Hispanic gardeners, he begins his own covert investigation in parallel with the official inquiry conducted by movie-buff cop Loren Dean. Ostensibly a thriller, the film has little onscreen violence, but shadowy threats prowl around the edges, and echoes of unseen murders permeate the picture. The narrative is a tangle, neglecting characters and leaving the vast conspiracy more a suggestion than a fully conceived plot, possibly the victim of last-minute reworking after a disastrous showing at Cannes. But Wenders's unerring eye for image and color creates a stunning, often startlingly beautiful film of unsettling menace and haunting mystery, and his generosity of character fills this world with vivid personalities. Cult director Sam Fuller and character actor Henry Silva have small roles, and Traci Lind costars as a young stuntwoman with ambitions of an acting career. As always, Ry Cooder's score is superb. --Sean Axmaker
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Rating: - Searching to Define the End of Violence
I'm curiously drawn to movies which seem to be panned by the majority of working and amateur critics, yet are staunchly defended by a small coterie of reputable adherents. What is it that most so disdain and compels but a few? Case in point: The End of Violence -- 26% on Rotten Tomatoes' "tomatometer", just 10% on their "cream of the crop"; not to mention a very mediocre average 3-star rating here on Amazon and a mere 5.5 out of 10 on IMDb. Yet, it received a glowing review from Stephen Holden of the New York Times who writes: "...with 'The End of Violence' Mr. Wenders has made a film as resonant as his most memorable work." At the time I first read that I wouldn't have known Mr. Wenders from Mr. Pibb, but the die was cast -- I had to see this film!
The End of Violence effectively weaves the strands of two tenuously connected main storylines and a few intriguing subplots to culminate in a profound ... Read More
Rating: - Define violence!
Win Wenders once more shows us another proof of his unexhausted talent with this admirable and complex puzzle of intrigue, tribulation and fear around three personages who intersect. One of them is a successful producer who makes admirable explosions blockbusters, his stranded wife who stands impatiently for her time and finally an expert hired by the FBI to place hidden cameras in L.A. to catch criminals in action.
The fate' s hands won' t be long to appear to make its ironic trickeries. A film that passed unprepared for the most of audience unexplainably. A merciless and acid urban fable.
Rating: - I'm a computer scientist. This is Hollywood.
Painfully, Wim Wenders pushes us through two hours of convoluted story, comatose characters, and an array of random lines all attempting to connect at some point. What begins as a political thriller slowly devolves into a poorly executed social rampage on lies, privacy, law, and corruption. Nothing in this film makes any sort of coherent sense.
Byrne plays a computer nerd that is searching for that shred of human decency through the lens of a Government issued spying device that currently surrounds Los Angeles. Bill Pullman plays a business Hollywood producer that will put money before any living soul. Somehow, these two have met in another life and this is where our story begins. Thankfully, Wenders decided not to show us any pre-story, so we are forced to watch the consequences of an unseen action. So, struggling to keep up, I watch as an unused Andie MacDowell stumbles through her lines obviously ... Read More
Rating: - The End of Freedom
In George Orwell's masterpiece "1984", Oceania is one of three new-world-order totalitarian governments that are in a perpetually mutual state of war. Oceania's propaganda motto is, "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", "Ignorance is Strength". The Ministry of Truth, where the protagonist works, controls the dissemination of all information, and constantly rewrites the historical record. "Newspeak" is the re-formulated and politically correct language used in this process, designed to obliterate all original thought and any past or present events perceived as adverse to the health of the State. Government surveillance is everywhere, even in the "private" rooming houses for example, where all residents are forced into morning calisthenics under two-way television monitoring by BB - Big Brother.
This reviewer can't know where Wenders got his inspiration for this way under-recognized film, but one must conclude ... Read More
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- Searching to Define the End of Violence
- Define violence!
- I'm a computer scientist. This is Hollywood. 
