User Reviews

Well...there were scenes (and even individual lines) that didn't ever have a chance of working; there scenes (and lines) that should have worked, but didn't; there were scenes that shouldn't have worked, but did; and there were a scattering of scenes, setups and pieces of dialog that actually did work pretty well (although not as well as I imagine the director thought they would.)

I started out hating Eric Roberts' performance but ended up liking it by the end of the movie; I started out liking Tia Carrera's and Tony Curtis' performances but hated them by the end of the movie; I liked Joe Pantoliano pretty much all the way through; I didn't care about William Forsythe one way or another; and I pretty much wanted to punch Chris Rock's character in the mouth all the way through.

I'll give the movie credit for trying to give 10 characters (counting Tony Curtis' mob boss) balanced amounts of exposure and screen time, but most of the team-ups in the 2nd act don't add all that much interest - I could almost flawlessly predict what the characters in each time were going to say to each other and how they were going to interact. That's not a good thing,either given that this is already a genre gangster movie.

Given the overheated premise of the screenplay and the cats-in-a-laundry-bag interaction of the cast of characters and the indifferently staged gunfights and the character revelations that are supposed to make you gasp but you can actually see coming way before they arrive...given all those problems, I can't recommend this to anyone other than a die hard crime-drama fan who just wants to see tough guys snarl fatalistic noir dialog and shoot each other.

Of course, if that's what you want - enjoy!

For some reason my friends did not think that much of this movie. They liked it but said that they could not watch it again because they knew all of the twists. When I mentioned the deep dialogue that permeated parts of the movie, their reply was that they did not think that the dialogue was that deep. I beg to differ, especially how they have only seen it once and if they watched it again they might change their mind. Still, there are movies that I liked, but doubt that I could watch again. I usually do not have them in my collection.

Anyway, this movie is about death, and life leading up to death. Jack, a nightclub owner, works for the mafia, but has decided to rip them off, so he hires a number of people with past criminal records to get these cases. What is unusual is that these people have records ranging from petty fraud to armed robbery, and all that is required is to walk into some place, place a gun in people's faces and take the money. Something not that difficult. Even more strange is that he has paired people up with people whom they do not like.

The ploy becomes apparent when one of them returns and learns that his partner also has aids, though he got it from sharing a needle. A quick questioning of people reveals that they are all dying of incurable diseases. A couple we learn nothing about, and one of them is retarded. Jack does this because he knows that it is a very dangerous job and that by taking people who are going to die anyway, they will have nothing to loose.

The idea raised in this movie is that we are all going to die sometimes. There are times when there is the idea of giving up all hope of doing anything, and another time there is the idea of life itself being relative, all life is precious to somebody who is going to die. We see the first idea with the Harvard graduate. At first we think that he may be lying but when he is running from the police, he gives an accurate description of the crimes that he has committed and the maximum penalties for each. So we wonder what a Harvard graduate is doing committing crimes when he could be earning a very good salary. Either he doesn't want to work hard, or he wants easy money. It is neither because he tells us that he has a brain tumor. He we see somebody working very hard, only to learn that all of this work has been in vain because he is never going to be able to reap the rewards.

This is a common biblical theme. In the book of Ecclesiastes we read how everything is meaningless, including toiling under the sun (which is work). What is the point of working hard for a lot of money, when you are going to die and leave it to somebody who is simply going to waste it. On the other hand Jesus speaks of the man who plans on retiring on a huge lump sum only to die the day before he retires. Working for a reward in the end is meaningless because we may never get to spend it. What point is there of working for something that we are never going to use? It is true that if we do not work, we do not eat, but beyond that what point is there to life if all of our toil is going to end in nothing? The other theme is that life is precious to one who is going to die. This is seen clearly when the guy who is dying of aids points out that it does not matter whether you have two months to live, you have two weeks to live, you are still going to die. This is what we should remember. These people have something that we don't have, they know when they are going to die. Unfortunately we don't want to think about that, and because of that we simply procrastinate. We should remember that we will all die, it is something that we cannot escape, and because of it we should live our lives as if it were the last day on earth.

The culmination of all of this pain and suffering was when Jack and George (the retarded guy) stood in a tunnel and a light appeared at the end. Standing in the light was a long haired man. George looks at this man and says, "I have read about you, you are God." Of coarse it was not God, but this is the culmination of all of this death. Here we are facing God, and what do we do. We might all try to predict what God is like and what he is going to do when we meet him, but we can never work anything out unless we are told. What is the point of saying that God will do this when nobody has told us that. It is like saying that Fred down the road will give me $50, even though I have never met Fred and have been told nothing about him. How can we say that, yet we think we can. The only way we can know what God wants is to listen to what he has to say, and that is seen in the bible.

The Immortals is a very good and very deep movie. My friends probably feel uncomfortable with it because it delves very deep into the idea of death and how we all have to die. This isn't a simple shoot them up, this is people who are dying of forces beyond their control. Death is really close here because any of us could be in this position.

The main problem is it's not over the top in the needed direction. It's a movie made of several, disparate attempts.

I'll put it this way:if The Immortals (1995) is unsatisfying, it is nevertheless interesting and,in an odd way, ambitious. It seems to set itself up for something. The things get rather phony sometimes in this movie—because it is badly written and it looks like they didn't receive the whole script, but only parts of it. The premise is also unacceptable—Roberts didn't need sick ,terminally ill people for his plan—it's not like it was all that motivating. In a word, The Immortals (1995) is an action drama badly written, but ambitious and unconventional. With the exception of Roberts himself, the cast is made of third—hand actors. (No offense of course to old Curtis, but his role is strictly ornamental.)

This film is sometimes a grim comedy, and sometimes an action drama. The idea was good, the literary means were poor. The movie needed a script and a style. Even the gore and violence are badly managed.

With a totally uninspired and useless director, The Immortals is still interesting and thrilling. The pace is good.Making an action drama with many characters (at least ten, in this case: Roberts, the eight lowlifes and Curtis) is a good thing. Then you have, of course, to be somehow able to manage these many characters.

The Immortals (1995) deserved a better and more skilled writer. As it is, it's very heterogeneous in a way that seems sloppy and clumsy. It also needed a Cimino as a director—to give the movie a form. On the other hand,if this film could of been better, it's anyway good that it was made. It suffers from a complete lack of style; but it is interesting for Roberts _completists or simply for anyone who would like to have an unconventional, above the average film.