Film: Premonition
Director: Mennan Yapo
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Nia Long, Peter Stormare, Irene Ziegler
Rating: 2/5
Forget your calendar as you know it. There is no such concept in this flick called Premonition. Find yourself caught in this pseudo intellectual film that makes it seem all pointless. It’s like being forced to climb the peak and then being pushed down.
The film is so character-centric that Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) is the be all and end all of the film. Her life is kissed with goodness, blessed with a loving husband, Jim (Julian McMahon) and two angelic children. All is well till she receives the devastating news that her husband has been killed in a car accident, and then she wakes up (Almost like the ‘and I woke up’ stories we used to write for our creative writing exams).
With her husband safe beside her, she assumes it was all but a dream, until these surreal occurrences keep recurring. Fighting time to gather the pieces, Linda is racing to salvage her love and all that they built together.
With a title like Premonition, it is not that hard to guess what you would be indulging in for the hour and a half. The movie in its initial twenty minutes is undoubtedly beautiful, traversing time over and over again (almost like how Groundhog Day did). But then corny explanations and the need to solve a non existent mystery kicks in, and it’s downhill from here on.
The manner in which the film revolves only around one character leaves no scope for you to see anything else, so brace yourself and watch Linda’s premonition uncover. The breaks that are offered, digressing from the plot is inexplicable. One hurt kid, one mother, one dead crow, one pitiable backyard and one inconsequential friend, all are left for you to figure out.
The saddest part is that the end negates everything that is built up through the course of the film. The need to pronounce and validate the vision seen by Linda puts you off completely (Why cant it be let to our imagination? Is it that we are that naive?).
The dialogues are too revealing, in terms of what is to follow. The moment the protagonist says something nice, it is an indication to expect the complete opposite (Haven’t we had enough of these clichés already?). Also, the much needed thrill and impact the film could have delivered is lost in the tight shots, the surroundings are almost non existent. In the high powered moments, little do you see if the poor lady is moving or not, all you are permitted is to see her flex those facial muscles and shed a tear or two. The camera, in whatever it does capture, is crisp and each shot is well lit.
What makes this film worth a watch is the crisp editing and the well rendered performance. Though on the whole, the film is a downer, there are many moments that manage to strike you with a wow.
Sandra Bullock has you addicted with her fine performance. Each movement is rendered with precision and thorough involvement. McMahon as the husband is less seen and more talked about through the entire film; in the few instances he does talk, he does well. Long, Stormare and Ziegler are provided with ‘blink and miss’ roles, stars of primetime TV episodes, one would have surely liked to see more of them.
Even as films like Spiderman3, POC, Shrek have been providing stiff competition to mainstream Bollywood films, this one is mere in its intensity. While it just might do a decent amount of business, don’t expect it to create a storm.
