stewball99

This if the first movie I've given a 10 to in years. If there was ever a movie that needed word-of-mouth to promote, this is it. A $4 Mil box is a disgrace. People don't know what it's about. If you have any appreciation for the Blues, or just a good use of excellent music, that alone is reason to go see it. How many people knew Jackson could sing, and damn fine too. You hear books and movies taunting that they're about salvation. After seeing this, you'll never be able to forgive such trivial use of the word. Yes, it's gritty, sexy, down home truth, bizarre and in-your-face real. Isn't that the best reason to see a movie? Those that get my meaning won't stay away from seeing this another week.

Listed on IMDb under the primary title of Return to Sender (2004) by pretty much unknown to me Danish director, Bille August (except for The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones), is about a woman on death row who is going to let herself be executed in order to protect some one else. Excellent performances by Danish stunner, Connie Nielson (the reason I rented the movie) who never looked better than here in understated prison makeup, and Aidan Quinn (as a letters from death row inmates bounty hunter) in a tight script that starts off like it's going to be an evils of capital punishment vehicle, but turns into something else, which I can only call the value of truth without giving too much away.

It was only released in the US on DVD last November, but set here and filmed here and in Denmark. There aren't any external reviews in English, and only one review on IMDb that panned it. I'd have gone to see this in the theater. 7+/10.

It is a great example of how a movie can have all the parts (except story) well done, and still be a looser in my never to be humble opinion.

It has five good minutes concerning the sub-theme of the movie (better to be lucky than good) stretched out at the beginning and the (genuinely Hitchcockian) end, which were indeed good, but the rest was like a 2 hour situation comedy without the comedy--either type of which are forever on my s#*tlist. "Let's watch the stupid people do stupid things so that we won't feel so stupid ourselves." It's right up there with slapstick; it was painful to watch at times.

How this ever got to be considered among the year's best is beyond me, and if it hadn't had Woody Allen's name on it, it wouldn't have been.