I quite liked it

But then, I really love "slice of life" movies. Not necessarily ensemble movies which are so hard to do well, but I like seeing glimpses of lives even without resolution, if the characters are interesting.

The old man looking for his daughter was touching and the story the told about the fastest pray was very entertaining.

Laura is just adorable, and it is in purpose that what happens in the room is not shown. We brace for the worst, and then, oops, she shows up unharmed at the Miami flight counter. It goes to say that sometimes sh!t does *not* happen. After Anthony Hopkins asks the guy to page her overhead and refuse, we are lead to believe that she will show up dead, killed by the sex offender, and oops, no, that's not it. I think the filmmakers had some fun, fooling us.

I found the Rachel Weisz / Jude Law story uninteresting. The only advantage was to see some glimpses of gorgeous Rachel Weisz. This was the weakest story.

The escort girl's story and her sister's, as well as the mafia boss' driver, were highly entertaining (not to forget that the two women are pretty and act well).

The Algerian dentist and his Russian assistant is a nice story and it does end up realistically disappointing. In movies there are happy endings; most stories in real life don't result in a favorable match. The dentist was too religious to accept an affair with a married woman.

Another downside is that his therapists' advice is preposterous. No well-trained therapist would have pushed the patient so explicitly in one direction. She says she is not there to give advice (no, she isn't) and then she proceeds to explicitly encourage him to have the affair. OK...

Cinematography is good, direction is good, the script *is* well written - I do speak three of the languages the characters speak, and they flow better than the English captions. Pace is good.

It's generally a good, entertaining movie, 7 out of 10 overall, all strenghts and downsides considered, but I tended to just tune off the parts I found less interesting, and the ones I liked would be a 9 out of 10 for me so overall that's the impression I was left with: one of the movies I liked the most in the last several months.

All the negativity here is the common stuff anytime a movie has more dialogue than action (there is always the moron crying booooooorinnngggg) and anytime there is no resolution in the end (what's up with this obsession with resolution, anyway?).