Hereafter - Blu-ray Review

'is Damon truly the star when, after nearly thirty minutes, we've only spent a single scene in his company?'

Hereafter's massively baggy runtime of one-hundred and twenty-nine minutes goes some way to speaking for its core problem: Peter Morgan's script is actually three films rolled in to one.

As a starting point there's Matt Damon as retired psychic George Lonegan, struggling to connect with the real world and form proper bonds with those around him. But is Damon truly the star when, after nearly thirty minutes, we've only spent a single scene in his company? Arguably that honour falls to Cécile De France, as a TV host who experiences visions after her brush with death in the film's masterful opening scene and sets out to combat the prejudice associated with being a 'believer'. That's not all though. In twins George and Frankie McLaren, director Clint Eastwood explores the 'hereafter' through a third lens, muddying the waters still further.

Any one of the above plot strands could easily justify a ninety-minute film in its own right and the hints that there wasn't ample time to develop each one properly are everywhere. Lonegan, for example, starts up a sweet-looking relationship with cooking partner Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard, lovely and sadly rather wasted) and is pressured by his brother (Jay Mohr) to return to selling his psychic readings full time. Both of these subplots just end. Suddenly and without much warning the characters involved in them disappear from the film. If the entirety of Hereafter was devoted to Damon's character there would be a much more satisfying arc to invest in.

First to be evicted from the recut film would undoubtedly be the McLaren twins who, with the best will in the world towards two so young, simply aren't good enough. Their line delivery is flat and characterless and in scenes that lack dialogue their faces tell you little. As a result of both this and the similar character disappearances during their story, it is near-impossible to invest in them on any level and their arc should have been lost at the editing stage.

Technically too Eastwood's film feels weak. The lighting in several scenes is woeful (anything in Lonegan's apartment) and his direction fails to avoid several psycho-babble cliches (note the 'two-hands-on-one-object-for-slightly-too-long' in the above still). The blu-ray transfer is also a let down.

All of which is a crying shame given that occasionally, just occasionally, there are flashes of what everyone involved can accomplish. Lonegan's reading of two characters (and their subsequent reactions) are particularly strong, sealing the travesty that Damon wasn't allowed to feature more in a film too concerned with too many other things.

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'These three stories are all 'connected' by one thing: a fascination with the afterlife. But the problem is, other than that, these stories have as much in common as a bean, rabbit and book shelf' - Cinematic Paradox