** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS **
This is truly a dreadful movie. If it were intended as satire, it failed miserably. If it was supposed to be a drama that revealed inner (or even superficial) truths about cults and families, it failed miserably at this too.
My wife and I, who watched this on DVD, feared we had rented a "bummer" the moment moment someone's cigarette smoke curled into a rubbish title graphic "Holy Smoke". Out worst fears were confirmed with the appearance of Harvey Keitel looking like a pantomime villain from a daytime TV soap.
The dialogue was laughably overblown and utterly implausible. The idea that women would be falling at the feet and into the bed of the sleazeball Keitel character would require superhuman efforts to suspend disbelief. And would the Winslett character suddenly have switched from contempt to lust in a nanosecond? Of course not.
Cults are a serious issue. Cult busting requires intelligent and sensitive counselling. The Keitel character had neither of these.
There are great cinema stories to be told about cults and cult busting. But Holy Smoke was sure as hell not one of them.
I could go on and on about this wasted effort... (Sigh)
This is truly a dreadful movie. If it were intended as satire, it failed miserably. If it was supposed to be a drama that revealed inner (or even superficial) truths about cults and families, it failed miserably at this too.
My wife and I, who watched this on DVD, feared we had rented a "bummer" the moment moment someone's cigarette smoke curled into a rubbish title graphic "Holy Smoke". Out worst fears were confirmed with the appearance of Harvey Keitel looking like a pantomime villain from a daytime TV soap.
The dialogue was laughably overblown and utterly implausible. The idea that women would be falling at the feet and into the bed of the sleazeball Keitel character would require superhuman efforts to suspend disbelief. And would the Winslett character suddenly have switched from contempt to lust in a nanosecond? Of course not.
Cults are a serious issue. Cult busting requires intelligent and sensitive counselling. The Keitel character had neither of these.
There are great cinema stories to be told about cults and cult busting. But Holy Smoke was sure as hell not one of them.
I could go on and on about this wasted effort... (Sigh)