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Pretentious Piece of Garbage saved only Nolte

posted 18 years ago by spawnerdawner2004
17 replies | jump to latest

Clean is not a very good movie with the potential for greatness it really fails to be very satisfying. It is a very slow and pretentious journey promising something believable and deep but falls flat.

Great performances though by a crusty Nick Nolte. Maggie Cheung is totally unbelievable as a drugged out wanna be Yoko rocker.

Like a lot of other posts out there, I waited and wanted to see something new and different for the characters to experience...more grittiness, uniqueness - the multilingual journey for Cheung was fabulous I thought...but something other than clichéd drug portrayal and superficial redemption was all we got.

Coulda been great but falls far short.

4 outta 10.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] mega_mike5 18 years ago

i agree, maggie cheung was stellar in this. shes one of the most beautiful women i've ever seena dn to see her stripped down to raw emotion was amazing.

[–] RainyCloudz 18 years ago

Maggie Cheung is the best and you know it! That's right, uh huh, that's right!

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] bettyo70 18 years ago

I wanted to love this film sooooooooo badly because I love Maggie Cheung. She is so fetching! But I think the pacing of this film was so annoyingly slow, AND it did not go deep enough in exploring Cheung's drug addiction and recovery. (For a great examination of addiction, "Trainspotting" rules!!)

Still, I would love to see Cheung in more complicated starring roles like these...

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] bettyo70 18 years ago

I couldn't even make it to the end of this film. I turned it off when Cheung and her son were walking in the park. Zzzzzzzzzz...

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] buzzkill1999 17 years ago

I liked the movie a lot too -- Cheung and Nolte are great and I loved the globe-trotting nature of the thing. Quiet and slow-moving at times, yes, but I thought it had a rhythm and tone that worked very well. Another thing I really liked is that the director didn't take the easy way and try to shock with repeated, graphic depictions of drug use, like we've seen over and over in tiresomely predictable films like "Permanent Midnight" and "Requiem for a Dream." And the scenes of Metric rocking out to "Dead Disco"? -- priceless . . .

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Revolutionnow 17 years ago

How is it pretentious?

Children of Men didn't have a monkey-cam.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Muvefan 17 years ago

"too damn gorgeous to be gritty"
Really, I thought they did a great job of making her unattractive.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] buchowski 15 years ago

spawnerdawner, the fact that you compare Maggie Cheung's character to Yoko Ono shows that you are completely clueless, ignorant and prejudiced. Retard.

[–] WarpedRecord 14 years ago

This film wasn't what it could have been, and Maggie Cheung gave an admirable performance, but I think she was miscast. I wasn't looking for any answers or resolution, but I was at least hoping for a degree of insight or believability. It seems like they had an outline for the film, but they just didn't know where to go with it.

But yes, Nick Nolte was outstanding – completely believable and honest as a middle-aged man struggling with protecting the interests of his grandson and the child's mother. For Mr. Nolte's part and the fact that this film maintained my attention, I gave it 7 out of 10 stars.

[–] Gus-69 14 years ago

Define "pretentious".

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