Amazon.co.uk Review
Evelyn sees Pierce Brosnan return to his native Ireland for a lightweight drama set in early 1950s Dublin. He plays the working-class Desmond Doyle, whose children, including the titular Evelyn, are taken into the unwanted care of the Catholic church when his wife leaves him. Doyle challenges the might of Church and State in the courts, and in the process threatens to change Ireland's legal system itself. The story is predictable, especially given that it's based on real events, but is expertly told by director Bruce Beresford, a past master with tales of determination in the face of adversity--Paradise Road (1997)--and in chronicling the Catholic Church--Black Robe (1991).
There are fine performances from Brosnan, Sophie Vavasseur as Evelyn, and Julianna Margulies, who shines in a cast that also features strong support from Alan Bates, Stephen Rea and Aidan Quinn. Evelyn is a heart-warming drama with barely a feel-good cliché left unturned, which may find its natural home on Christmas Day television as an alternative to the Bond movie on the other side. Consider it a gentle cousin to Angela's Ashes (1999); those seeking more caustic fare on a similar theme would do well to visit The Magdalene Sisters (2002).
On the DVD: Evelyn is presented with a short (21 min), thoughtful making-of featurette. There are good, highly informative commentaries by Bruce Beresford, and by producer Beau St Clair with Pierce Brosnan, in which the superstar reveals how seriously he took this low-budget film, and how much it meant to him. The original spoiler-filled trailer is also included. The film itself is anamorphically enhanced at the original 2.35:1 in a flawless transfer from a virtually perfect print. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is a model of clarity that appropriately doesn't draw attention to itself. --Gary S Dalkin
Customer Reviews:
Touching family film.......2007-03-11
This is the best film I've seen in a long time. I struggle to find films that are not offensive and this was something you could enjoy with all the family but also appealing to adults. It has humour, is based on a true story which is always a bonus and a tearjerker with a happy ending. I even found the court scenes moving and being a lawyer normally legal drama bores me to tears. This film reminds us what is truly important in life. I haven't read the book and I understand the film digresses from it somewhat, but as far as having the ingredients of being a good film goes - this has it. The 'angel rays' were a bit over-sentimental but that is a very minor criticism. Great film!
Painful acting.......2005-04-05
This is a real miss for me. Having read other reviews, it sounded like a gripping story (and the story is), but, this production does the story no justice at all. It fails to get you gripped and feel anything for the key characters, with the acting at times being a little wooden and week. It's a shame becuase I am sure that given different direction and maybe a different lead role (Piers Brosnon did not do it for us!) this could have been a very good and moving story. Instead it failed to deliever on many counts, with the only acception being the three young children who were excellent.
Angel Rays, St. Judes and the Miracle of Justice........2004-02-28
Ever since the constitutional reform of 1936, the Catholic Church and the Irish state have been inexorably linked; more so than in almost any other western society. A substantial part of Irish legislation - particularly, Irish family law - was (and partly, still is) directly based on Catholic doctrine: prohibiting divorce and abortion; and until 1953, prohibiting a single father from bringing up his children without the mother's consent, thus in essence committing every motherless child to church orphanages until age 16. This changed only when the Irish Supreme Court declared the respective sections of the Children's Act unconstitutional - a landmark decision because for the first time the ties between church and state were broken, and for the first time an Irish statute had been declared unconstitutional at all. "Evelyn" tells the story of the man whose civil action made this decision come about.
Desmond Doyle was a blue-collar Dublin painter and decorator, left to take care of his daughter Evelyn and her brothers alone after his wife had ran away with another man. Jobless, penniless and more given to drowning his sorrows in Guinness than addressing them head-on, he was ill-suited for the task, and it didn't take long for church and state to step in and decree that, under prevalent law, Evelyn and her brothers were to be committed to Catholic orphanage schools. Certain that he wouldn't be able to afford a lawyer - and having been told that his case was hopeless anyway - Doyle unsuccessfully tried to regain his children by other means, his methods of choice being bullying and abduction. Eventually he met Irish American attorney Nick Barron, who was willing to take on Doyle's case pro bono, together with his Dublin colleagues Michael Beattie and Tom Connolly, Irish rugby-idol-turned-family-law-expert, whose counsel would prove instrumental both in securing public support for Doyle's case and in drafting Barron's victorious argument.
Written by Paul Pender, who had met the real Evelyn Doyle at a conference, the movie's screenplay made its way onto the desk of Pierce Brosnan, who almost immediately decided to take it on, on a low budget basis - fortunately so, as the project is patently unfit for a large, Hollywood-style production - and soon also decided to play the role of Desmond Doyle. And what at first sight may look like a surprising choice for the actor so much better known for roles like James Bond and Remington Steele was in fact a close match for Brosnan, who grew up in the 1950s' Ireland and intimately knows the ins and outs of Catholic schools, which, judging by his observations on the commentary track, obviously left a profound mark; bitter aftertaste rather than cozy memories of happy days gone by.
Brosnan and co-producer Beau St. Clair were able to secure a perfect and, particularly considering the project's overall size, rather high-profile cast, with Aidan Quinn starring as Nick Barron, Stephen Rea as Michael Beattie, the great Alan Bates in one of his last-ever roles as the flawed but truly grand Tom Connolly (who declares whiskey a more reliable companion than God, but brings rosary beads to the court hearing "to count the scores," and who sees hope even in the most desperate "St. Judes," named for the patron saint of hopeless cases); Julianna Margulies, with as flawless an Irish accent as the rest of the cast, as Beattie's sister Bernadette, who is courted by both Doyle and Barron (guess who gets the girl ... and nothing against Pierce Brosnan, but I'd so wish for Quinn to luck out once only, too!), the eminently likeable Frank Kelly as Desmond Doyle's father, John Lynch as senior government counsel Wolfe - and young Sophie Vavasseur in the title role: a true find, with an instant charm and screen presence making it almost unbelievable that she had never acted before.
Thanks to the subtle performances given by all of its actors, as well as Bruce Beresford's admirable and restrained direction, "Evelyn" is a gentle and despite its serious subject tremendously uplifting film, with a perfect blend of passion, poetry and tender humor, staying with you long after the end credits have run. Although it occasionally scrapes by cliche just so (e.g., was it really necessary to expressly bring up "David vs. Goliath" in a movie whose entire premise is clearly based on this concept to begin with?), its imagery is the most powerful when expressed from Evelyn's point of view: her shock at seeing her mother drive off with a stranger, her anger at witnessing a nun lashing out at a girl for not knowing her catechism ... and her unshakeable faith in her grandfather, who has explained to her, when taking her to her convent school, that the sun rays breaking through the clouds are "angel rays," sent by her guardian angel as a token of protection; and whose presence she feels, even after he has died of a heart attack, whenever she sees the sun coming through the gray Irish winter sky. - At one point during the production, it looked like the movie was going to have to live without a music score - that is, apart from the Irish songs performed live by Frank Kelly (who is also a trained violinist) and Pierce Brosnan (another "first" for him, and certainly one that will delight many of his fans), as part of the Doyles' pub music venture. But fortunately a full soundtrack was ensured eventually, and Stephen Endelman's score - perfectly complimented by Gemma Hayes's "Angel Rays" and Van Morrison's "Sitting on Top of the World" - greatly adds to the movie's lyrical quality. This is one of the year 2002's true cinematic "finds"; a small, quietly shining gem. Bravo, Mrs. Brosnan, Beresford & Co.! I hope Irish Dreamtime Productions will give us more films like this in the future ... and when sun rays break through a cloudy sky, I will never again look at them the way I used to.
Picture and Sound Not Clear.......2004-02-03
2/2/04 Purchased video as international customer(Pennsylvania,USA) UPC 01153 906858 's Evelyn has fine "jacket packaging"to illustrate a possibly novel story plot ..however the video was poor quality,pictures static and voice muffled. Gave it 1 Star because "zero" or "minus" weren't options..The Problem with shopping internationally is "time and money" for returns ....
The acceptable face of sentimentality.......2004-01-15
I 'happened' on this film by chance, never having heard anything about it, but I found a truly uplifting experience. The quality of the acting and the direction is superb - the little girl who plays Evelyn is outstanding. The story tugs at the emotions in a clever way and yet always remains within the bounds of the believable. The location shots of 1950s Dublin are very atmospheric and the characters maintain their credibility throughout. The dialogue, which contains many little gems, is beautifully scripted, and everything is treated with a serious, but light touch. All I can say is: go and see it for yourself.
![Out Of Time [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/218TSKAFZNL.jpg)
Average customer rating:
- A wee bit too simple(-minded)
- Starts slow, but picks up speed
- Good, but it had even better potential
- "A BRILLIANT TWIST"
- INTELLIGENT THRILLER - KEEPS YOU HOOKED
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Out Of Time [2003]
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Eva Mendes ,
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![Out Of Time [2003]](http://www.bill88.com/buy.gif) |
Amazon.co.uk Review
The Denzel Washington thriller Out of Time is quite enjoyable if you ignore its implausible plotting. Partly inspired by 1948's The Big Clock and its nominal 1987 remake No Way Out, this reunion of Washington and his Devil in a Blue Dress director Carl Franklin is about a man--in this case the police chief (Washington) of sleepy Banyan Key, Florida--who falls into a trap set by others, sinks into legal quicksand of his own making, and must race the clock to extricate himself from a series of incriminating setbacks. The Florida setting adds welcome character to the pot-boiler plot, and Washington's screen credibility makes it easy to overlook the absurdities of rookie writer David Collard's screenplay. Eva Mendes is sharp and sensible as Washington's estranged wife (do you think they'll reconcile for a happy ending?), and the talented John Billingsley--whose portrayal of Dr Phlox on TV's Enterprise is vastly underrated--is a constant delight as Washington's medical examiner, beer buddy and wily co-conspirator. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews:
A wee bit too simple(-minded).......2007-10-15
A simple thriller in which a woman is used as a piece of bait to get some drug money from a gullible cop who believes he is in love with her. The final twist is not what we could have hoped, but it sure is convincing about the dumbness of cops or even men when they get infatuated with love. But the interest of the film is essentially in the hectic chase-escape of one cop after-from another cop who happens to be his-her wife-husband. One thing is sure: as soon as a woman appears within his eye-range he loses all rational common sense and starts seeing butterflies landing on his nose. But it is funny and entertaining.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Starts slow, but picks up speed.......2007-10-06
Denzel Washington plays a police chief in a small town in Florida. We first see him having an affair with a married woman stricken with cancer. His girlfriend has terminal cancer and it looks like her only chance to afford treatment has slipped away. Denzel's character, Chief Whitlock, then makes an illegal decision to help her financially. Shortly after this we see him served with divorce papers. And his girlfriend and her husband turn up dead in a house fire started by arson. Of course from our point of view the only culprit can be Whitlock.
This is where the movie really starts. The police force starts to track down the killer. At the same time, Whitlock's works hard to stay one step ahead of the investigation. This is a definite suspense movie. I was on the edge of my seat as I watched Whitlock race to stay one step ahead of the investigation. Denzel really sold this character. He did great job acting and made it realistic. Though the movie is fun to watch once it gets moving. I found it hard to believe that any police chief would do what he did. It is still defiantly worth watching.
Good, but it had even better potential.......2007-08-14
Matt Whitlock, chief of police for the sleepy little south Florida town of Banyan Key, has a big problem. Whitlock (Denzel Washington) has taken $500,000 in drug money from the evidence room at police headquarters and given it to a woman he's been having a passionate affair with, Ann Harrison (Sanaa Lathan). Harrison has learned that she has aggressive cancer of the lungs and liver; a trip to Europe for expensive alternative therapy is her only hope. Her husband, Chris Harrison (Dean Cain), is a thug who's a security guard for the town's hospital. Ann Harrison works out a $1 million life insurance policy on herself and names Whitlock the beneficiary. He is sure that one way or another he can replace the money before the drug case will ever come to trial. Then three things happen. Both Ann and Chris Harrison are burned to death, beyond recognition, when an arsonist sets fire to their house. Second, Whitlock's estranged wife, Alex (Eva Mendes), who is divorcing him and is a homicide detective, is given the double murder. And third, the drug case becomes active and Federal agents want all the evidence, including the money. Everything starts to point at Whitlock as the probable murderer. It's only a matter of time before his wife lines in the dots. To prove his innocence he has to stay one step ahead of his wife and one step ahead of the Feds. And he has to move a lot faster than the real bad guys, once he figures out who they are.
This is a movie that has a lot going for it. The locale looks great. Banyan Key is a place with big trees down main street, seedy houseboats and crab shacks. It's a place that's hot in the daytime and sweaty at night. Denzel Washington as usual turns in a performance that's shrewd and likable. The plot is nicely convoluted, even though it relies on some things falling into place a little too conveniently.
What's not to like about it? For starters, the screenplay. There's too much exposition and too little energy. It took a long time, it seemed to me, before the plot started cooking. None of the characters, even Washington's Matt Whitlock, grabbed me sufficiently to care much about them, and the villains weren't very engaging. The casting also, for me, had a major flaw. Eva Mendes is a good looking woman, but at least in this movie she shows a limited acting range. She just couldn't make her character the kind of smart, skeptical, strong woman who might have given Washington a run for his money. Their scenes together seemed to me to be conventional Hollywood stuff.
To see Washington play a first rate police chief in a movie with a lot of charm and energy, check out The Mighty Quinn. To see a movie starring Washington and directed by Carl Franklin that hits all burners, check out Devil in a Blue Dress. Out of Time, for me, is pleasant to watch, but maybe not one to keep. The DVD has a number of typical extras such as outtakes, screen tests, "making of" feature and so on. The DVD picture looks great.
"A BRILLIANT TWIST".......2007-08-05
If you want to know what happens, read the synopsis, better still watch the movie. It is not a fast paced film considering the title but it has got fantastic edge of the seat stuff as the story unfolds. I have watched it a couple of times and I will again and even though I know the ending it is still a very enjoyable thriller that is one of D.W.`S better films.
INTELLIGENT THRILLER - KEEPS YOU HOOKED.......2007-06-24
This film has a very original and interesting story, which keeps you hooked to the very end with a few twists and turns along the way. The acting and direction is just as good, and it is filmed around the Miami area so a sunny, stylish and sexy setting. The only little niggle is that there is not much action, the movie moves along at the right pace as the plot develops very cleverly. A very good intelligent thriller that is well recommended.
![Out of Time [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21VBQQDXD1L.jpg)
Average customer rating:
- A wee bit too simple(-minded)
- Starts slow, but picks up speed
- Good, but it had even better potential
- "A BRILLIANT TWIST"
- INTELLIGENT THRILLER - KEEPS YOU HOOKED
|
Out of Time [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring:
Denzel Washington ,
Eva Mendes ,
Sanaa Lathan ,
Dean Cain , and
John Billingsley (II)
Director:
Carl Franklin
Manufacturer: MGM
ProductGroup: DVD
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Virtuosity - Dvd [1996]
-
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ASIN: B0000VJG72
Release Date: 2004-01-06
|
Amazon.co.uk Review
The Denzel Washington thriller Out of Time is quite enjoyable if you ignore its implausible plotting. Partly inspired by 1948's The Big Clock and its nominal 1987 remake No Way Out, this reunion of Washington and his Devil in a Blue Dress director Carl Franklin is about a man--in this case the police chief (Washington) of sleepy Banyan Key, Florida--who falls into a trap set by others, sinks into legal quicksand of his own making, and must race the clock to extricate himself from a series of incriminating setbacks. The Florida setting adds welcome character to the pot-boiler plot, and Washington's screen credibility makes it easy to overlook the absurdities of rookie writer David Collard's screenplay. Eva Mendes is sharp and sensible as Washington's estranged wife (do you think they'll reconcile for a happy ending?), and the talented John Billingsley--whose portrayal of Dr Phlox on TV's Enterprise is vastly underrated--is a constant delight as Washington's medical examiner, beer buddy and wily co-conspirator. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews:
A wee bit too simple(-minded).......2007-10-15
A simple thriller in which a woman is used as a piece of bait to get some drug money from a gullible cop who believes he is in love with her. The final twist is not what we could have hoped, but it sure is convincing about the dumbness of cops or even men when they get infatuated with love. But the interest of the film is essentially in the hectic chase-escape of one cop after-from another cop who happens to be his-her wife-husband. One thing is sure: as soon as a woman appears within his eye-range he loses all rational common sense and starts seeing butterflies landing on his nose. But it is funny and entertaining.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Starts slow, but picks up speed.......2007-10-06
Denzel Washington plays a police chief in a small town in Florida. We first see him having an affair with a married woman stricken with cancer. His girlfriend has terminal cancer and it looks like her only chance to afford treatment has slipped away. Denzel's character, Chief Whitlock, then makes an illegal decision to help her financially. Shortly after this we see him served with divorce papers. And his girlfriend and her husband turn up dead in a house fire started by arson. Of course from our point of view the only culprit can be Whitlock.
This is where the movie really starts. The police force starts to track down the killer. At the same time, Whitlock's works hard to stay one step ahead of the investigation. This is a definite suspense movie. I was on the edge of my seat as I watched Whitlock race to stay one step ahead of the investigation. Denzel really sold this character. He did great job acting and made it realistic. Though the movie is fun to watch once it gets moving. I found it hard to believe that any police chief would do what he did. It is still defiantly worth watching.
Good, but it had even better potential.......2007-08-14
Matt Whitlock, chief of police for the sleepy little south Florida town of Banyan Key, has a big problem. Whitlock (Denzel Washington) has taken $500,000 in drug money from the evidence room at police headquarters and given it to a woman he's been having a passionate affair with, Ann Harrison (Sanaa Lathan). Harrison has learned that she has aggressive cancer of the lungs and liver; a trip to Europe for expensive alternative therapy is her only hope. Her husband, Chris Harrison (Dean Cain), is a thug who's a security guard for the town's hospital. Ann Harrison works out a $1 million life insurance policy on herself and names Whitlock the beneficiary. He is sure that one way or another he can replace the money before the drug case will ever come to trial. Then three things happen. Both Ann and Chris Harrison are burned to death, beyond recognition, when an arsonist sets fire to their house. Second, Whitlock's estranged wife, Alex (Eva Mendes), who is divorcing him and is a homicide detective, is given the double murder. And third, the drug case becomes active and Federal agents want all the evidence, including the money. Everything starts to point at Whitlock as the probable murderer. It's only a matter of time before his wife lines in the dots. To prove his innocence he has to stay one step ahead of his wife and one step ahead of the Feds. And he has to move a lot faster than the real bad guys, once he figures out who they are.
This is a movie that has a lot going for it. The locale looks great. Banyan Key is a place with big trees down main street, seedy houseboats and crab shacks. It's a place that's hot in the daytime and sweaty at night. Denzel Washington as usual turns in a performance that's shrewd and likable. The plot is nicely convoluted, even though it relies on some things falling into place a little too conveniently.
What's not to like about it? For starters, the screenplay. There's too much exposition and too little energy. It took a long time, it seemed to me, before the plot started cooking. None of the characters, even Washington's Matt Whitlock, grabbed me sufficiently to care much about them, and the villains weren't very engaging. The casting also, for me, had a major flaw. Eva Mendes is a good looking woman, but at least in this movie she shows a limited acting range. She just couldn't make her character the kind of smart, skeptical, strong woman who might have given Washington a run for his money. Their scenes together seemed to me to be conventional Hollywood stuff.
To see Washington play a first rate police chief in a movie with a lot of charm and energy, check out The Mighty Quinn. To see a movie starring Washington and directed by Carl Franklin that hits all burners, check out Devil in a Blue Dress. Out of Time, for me, is pleasant to watch, but maybe not one to keep. The DVD has a number of typical extras such as outtakes, screen tests, "making of" feature and so on. The DVD picture looks great.
"A BRILLIANT TWIST".......2007-08-05
If you want to know what happens, read the synopsis, better still watch the movie. It is not a fast paced film considering the title but it has got fantastic edge of the seat stuff as the story unfolds. I have watched it a couple of times and I will again and even though I know the ending it is still a very enjoyable thriller that is one of D.W.`S better films.
INTELLIGENT THRILLER - KEEPS YOU HOOKED.......2007-06-24
This film has a very original and interesting story, which keeps you hooked to the very end with a few twists and turns along the way. The acting and direction is just as good, and it is filmed around the Miami area so a sunny, stylish and sexy setting. The only little niggle is that there is not much action, the movie moves along at the right pace as the plot develops very cleverly. A very good intelligent thriller that is well recommended.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Evelyn sees Pierce Brosnan return to his native Ireland for a lightweight drama set in early 1950s Dublin. He plays the working-class Desmond Doyle, whose children, including the titular Evelyn, are taken into the unwanted care of the Catholic church when his wife leaves him. Doyle challenges the might of Church and State in the courts, and in the process threatens to change Ireland's legal system itself. The story is predictable, especially given that it's based on real events, but is expertly told by director Bruce Beresford, a past master with tales of determination in the face of adversity--Paradise Road (1997)--and in chronicling the Catholic Church--Black Robe (1991).
There are fine performances from Brosnan, Sophie Vavasseur as Evelyn, and Julianna Margulies, who shines in a cast that also features strong support from Alan Bates, Stephen Rea and Aidan Quinn. Evelyn is a heart-warming drama with barely a feel-good cliché left unturned, which may find its natural home on Christmas Day television as an alternative to the Bond movie on the other side. Consider it a gentle cousin to Angela's Ashes (1999); those seeking more caustic fare on a similar theme would do well to visit The Magdalene Sisters (2002).
On the DVD: Evelyn is presented with a short (21 min), thoughtful making-of featurette. There are good, highly informative commentaries by Bruce Beresford, and by producer Beau St Clair with Pierce Brosnan, in which the superstar reveals how seriously he took this low-budget film, and how much it meant to him. The original spoiler-filled trailer is also included. The film itself is anamorphically enhanced at the original 2.35:1 in a flawless transfer from a virtually perfect print. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is a model of clarity that appropriately doesn't draw attention to itself. --Gary S Dalkin
Customer Reviews:
Touching family film.......2007-03-11
This is the best film I've seen in a long time. I struggle to find films that are not offensive and this was something you could enjoy with all the family but also appealing to adults. It has humour, is based on a true story which is always a bonus and a tearjerker with a happy ending. I even found the court scenes moving and being a lawyer normally legal drama bores me to tears. This film reminds us what is truly important in life. I haven't read the book and I understand the film digresses from it somewhat, but as far as having the ingredients of being a good film goes - this has it. The 'angel rays' were a bit over-sentimental but that is a very minor criticism. Great film!
Painful acting.......2005-04-05
This is a real miss for me. Having read other reviews, it sounded like a gripping story (and the story is), but, this production does the story no justice at all. It fails to get you gripped and feel anything for the key characters, with the acting at times being a little wooden and week. It's a shame becuase I am sure that given different direction and maybe a different lead role (Piers Brosnon did not do it for us!) this could have been a very good and moving story. Instead it failed to deliever on many counts, with the only acception being the three young children who were excellent.
Angel Rays, St. Judes and the Miracle of Justice........2004-02-28
Ever since the constitutional reform of 1936, the Catholic Church and the Irish state have been inexorably linked; more so than in almost any other western society. A substantial part of Irish legislation - particularly, Irish family law - was (and partly, still is) directly based on Catholic doctrine: prohibiting divorce and abortion; and until 1953, prohibiting a single father from bringing up his children without the mother's consent, thus in essence committing every motherless child to church orphanages until age 16. This changed only when the Irish Supreme Court declared the respective sections of the Children's Act unconstitutional - a landmark decision because for the first time the ties between church and state were broken, and for the first time an Irish statute had been declared unconstitutional at all. "Evelyn" tells the story of the man whose civil action made this decision come about.
Desmond Doyle was a blue-collar Dublin painter and decorator, left to take care of his daughter Evelyn and her brothers alone after his wife had ran away with another man. Jobless, penniless and more given to drowning his sorrows in Guinness than addressing them head-on, he was ill-suited for the task, and it didn't take long for church and state to step in and decree that, under prevalent law, Evelyn and her brothers were to be committed to Catholic orphanage schools. Certain that he wouldn't be able to afford a lawyer - and having been told that his case was hopeless anyway - Doyle unsuccessfully tried to regain his children by other means, his methods of choice being bullying and abduction. Eventually he met Irish American attorney Nick Barron, who was willing to take on Doyle's case pro bono, together with his Dublin colleagues Michael Beattie and Tom Connolly, Irish rugby-idol-turned-family-law-expert, whose counsel would prove instrumental both in securing public support for Doyle's case and in drafting Barron's victorious argument.
Written by Paul Pender, who had met the real Evelyn Doyle at a conference, the movie's screenplay made its way onto the desk of Pierce Brosnan, who almost immediately decided to take it on, on a low budget basis - fortunately so, as the project is patently unfit for a large, Hollywood-style production - and soon also decided to play the role of Desmond Doyle. And what at first sight may look like a surprising choice for the actor so much better known for roles like James Bond and Remington Steele was in fact a close match for Brosnan, who grew up in the 1950s' Ireland and intimately knows the ins and outs of Catholic schools, which, judging by his observations on the commentary track, obviously left a profound mark; bitter aftertaste rather than cozy memories of happy days gone by.
Brosnan and co-producer Beau St. Clair were able to secure a perfect and, particularly considering the project's overall size, rather high-profile cast, with Aidan Quinn starring as Nick Barron, Stephen Rea as Michael Beattie, the great Alan Bates in one of his last-ever roles as the flawed but truly grand Tom Connolly (who declares whiskey a more reliable companion than God, but brings rosary beads to the court hearing "to count the scores," and who sees hope even in the most desperate "St. Judes," named for the patron saint of hopeless cases); Julianna Margulies, with as flawless an Irish accent as the rest of the cast, as Beattie's sister Bernadette, who is courted by both Doyle and Barron (guess who gets the girl ... and nothing against Pierce Brosnan, but I'd so wish for Quinn to luck out once only, too!), the eminently likeable Frank Kelly as Desmond Doyle's father, John Lynch as senior government counsel Wolfe - and young Sophie Vavasseur in the title role: a true find, with an instant charm and screen presence making it almost unbelievable that she had never acted before.
Thanks to the subtle performances given by all of its actors, as well as Bruce Beresford's admirable and restrained direction, "Evelyn" is a gentle and despite its serious subject tremendously uplifting film, with a perfect blend of passion, poetry and tender humor, staying with you long after the end credits have run. Although it occasionally scrapes by cliche just so (e.g., was it really necessary to expressly bring up "David vs. Goliath" in a movie whose entire premise is clearly based on this concept to begin with?), its imagery is the most powerful when expressed from Evelyn's point of view: her shock at seeing her mother drive off with a stranger, her anger at witnessing a nun lashing out at a girl for not knowing her catechism ... and her unshakeable faith in her grandfather, who has explained to her, when taking her to her convent school, that the sun rays breaking through the clouds are "angel rays," sent by her guardian angel as a token of protection; and whose presence she feels, even after he has died of a heart attack, whenever she sees the sun coming through the gray Irish winter sky. - At one point during the production, it looked like the movie was going to have to live without a music score - that is, apart from the Irish songs performed live by Frank Kelly (who is also a trained violinist) and Pierce Brosnan (another "first" for him, and certainly one that will delight many of his fans), as part of the Doyles' pub music venture. But fortunately a full soundtrack was ensured eventually, and Stephen Endelman's score - perfectly complimented by Gemma Hayes's "Angel Rays" and Van Morrison's "Sitting on Top of the World" - greatly adds to the movie's lyrical quality. This is one of the year 2002's true cinematic "finds"; a small, quietly shining gem. Bravo, Mrs. Brosnan, Beresford & Co.! I hope Irish Dreamtime Productions will give us more films like this in the future ... and when sun rays break through a cloudy sky, I will never again look at them the way I used to.
Picture and Sound Not Clear.......2004-02-03
2/2/04 Purchased video as international customer(Pennsylvania,USA) UPC 01153 906858 's Evelyn has fine "jacket packaging"to illustrate a possibly novel story plot ..however the video was poor quality,pictures static and voice muffled. Gave it 1 Star because "zero" or "minus" weren't options..The Problem with shopping internationally is "time and money" for returns ....
The acceptable face of sentimentality.......2004-01-15
I 'happened' on this film by chance, never having heard anything about it, but I found a truly uplifting experience. The quality of the acting and the direction is superb - the little girl who plays Evelyn is outstanding. The story tugs at the emotions in a clever way and yet always remains within the bounds of the believable. The location shots of 1950s Dublin are very atmospheric and the characters maintain their credibility throughout. The dialogue, which contains many little gems, is beautifully scripted, and everything is treated with a serious, but light touch. All I can say is: go and see it for yourself.
UK DVD:
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