When a Man Falls (2007)

When A Movie Viewer Falls

God-awful movie. I was first attrated to the movie at a popular video store because of the actors and the description on the movie sleeve. However, the description is a complete misrepresentation: "When a lonely housewife (Sharon Stone) faces the reality of her dying marriage to Gary (Timothy Hutton), she seeks comfort in unlawful and forbidden activities." Her role was minor and we see her shoplifting twice. On the front of the sleeve: "WHEN A MAN FALLS in the end . . . she got what she wanted." Well, I didn't see it coming and I never saw it coming because we don't really know what she wanted. Then, the final paragraph, "WHEN A MAN FALLS is a gripping psychological thriller sure to keep you mesmerized right up until the shocking end!" The only thing I wanted to grip was my own throat for putting myself through this unthrilling unpsychological bore of an incoherent mess. July 20, 2008

Really boring

Don't your time and save your money, for sure, one of the most boring you can look at. I can't imagine someone would buy it. June 23, 2008

When a man falls

This was the worst movie I have seen, the star make, it almost makes us not want to purchase any more of her movies. April 22, 2008

Say, wha?

Um, can you say one of the worst movies ever? The only man that fell here was me..falling for the price of renting this horrible movie! Lifeless, dreary, and humorless. Perhaps has something to do with the depressing plot: A loser janitor (Dylan Baker), listens to opera and has emotional and social issues. Fast forward to he meets up with another loser (Hutton), and his loser shop-lifting wife (Stone). Stone looks stoned. Stone looks yucky. Somewhere I lost interest. I think it was like right after the opening credits. No. Maybe it was the awful acting. Still, it could have been the lack of a coherent plot, I don't really know or care. But if you want a "gripping psychological thriller" as the box claims, then you'll do yourself a favor and keep looking. What a waste of talent. February 20, 2008

Disintegration of lives loosely connected

The original title of this bleak flim - WHEN A MAN FALLS IN THE FOREST - was inexplicably shortened to the nebulous WHEN A MAN FALLS for the release of the DVD: had the original title been retained, the audience may have been given a clue as to the intended message of the story. This is the second film for 26-year old writer/director Ryan Eslinger and it does suggest that he wants to deal with some existential material, but he has a way to grow into how to make it happen.

The lives of three men and a woman are interconnected in the all too common shallow 'relationships' that are a major problem in how our society is working. Bill (Dylan Baker) is a night janitor in a large company, a man who shuts out the boring world with his earphones connected to the great opera classics: he avoids people including those who saunter past him and those whose chaotic lives in the next door apartment distress him. Gary Fields (Timothy Hutton) is a down and out professional man who works in the building that Bill nocturnally keeps tidy, the two 'old high school acquaintances' meeting only because Gary has taken to sleeping in the office. Gary's wife Karen (Sharon Stone, without makeup and looking spent and used) has lost all feeling for living, detests Gary, and finds her only joy is in shoplifting. Gary has shut himself off from old friends for reasons that seem to be related to an accident that involved is best friend Travis (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a man at odds with his own environment. The only apparent connection here is that, once Gary discovers that Bill is a night janitor, Gary and Travis feel guilty that their response to Bill in high school had been one of cruel ridicule. Each of the four main characters wanders aimlessly through a world that has become strange and vindictive and it is only a bizarre incident that throws the quartet into some semblance of meaning. Each person has fallen, but since they are in the midst of a lonely 'forest', has anyone noticed or cared?

This could be a study in personal tragedy were it done better, but despite the fine credentials of the actors, the script is so full of holes that character development suffers and what results is not unlike watching an injured bull struggling around a bullfight ring as the crowd attends to the matador et al. Sadly we just don't care about these damaged people, making connection with the film next to impossible. Maybe next film...Grady Harp, February 08 February 16, 2008

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