Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Spikeopath "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven"Michael Winterbottom directs what is in essence a Western version of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. It's Sierra Nevada, California, 1867 and the pioneer town of Kingdom Come is thriving under the strict but effective rule of Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan). Dillon came by way of a gold claim many years earlier by way of a trade, the barter? His wife and child. But now the past is about to catch up with him and Kingdom Come could well turn out to be his burning hell...Right off the bat it has to be said that The Claim is a difficult film to recommend, even to Western movie lovers. It's deliberately slow and purposely elegiac and ethereal. The literary aspects of the narrative positively sparkle, yet still this doesn't make the story any more vibrant, because Winterbottom and screenplay writer Frank Cottrell Boyce want to keep things in perspective. In a film that is awash with untold beauty, the snowy mountainous landscapes (Calgary standing in for California) stunningly photographed by Alwin H. Küchler, it's perpetually cold and bleak, the ice and snow a constant that marries up with characters who are deliberately hard to like.Technically this is one superior piece of work. Küchler and Winterbottom's panoramas are sublime, the town is strikingly designed by the art department, all wooded angles and smoking chimneys that are magnificently framed by the mountains, while the sound-mix thunders the ears and adds another dimension to the grubby realistic feel. Interior sequences are filmed in low lights, making the lamps spectral in sight, the costume design and the narrative strength of the town whorehouse (which is the fulcrum of proceedings) have a class about them that shines bright in the pantheon of modern era produced Westerns, while Michael Nyman's musical score is evocatively strong.The cast respond well to Winterbottom's requirements, Mullan, Wes Bentley, Sarah Polley, Milla Jovovich and Nastassja Kinski (how nice to see the latter twin euro beauties stripped of make up to show a natural era sexiness) all turn in charismatic and heartfelt performances. Narratively the film is driving towards Dillon's day of reckoning, his shoulders heavy with regret and his soul in desperate need of purging. In the interim we are privy to the lives and loves of the townsfolk, their foibles, faults and fancies, this while the town is alive with the arrival of the railroad company, who it is hoped by Dillon will make Kingdom Come prosper still further...Unfair comparisons have been drawn with Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Yes, this is similar in style and execution, but why not just see it as the perfect companion piece to Altman's movie? Because it is. How about we instead look at the finale? Which draws a favourably thematic link to the brilliant Boetticher/Scott Western, Ride Lonesome. When push comes to shove, and in honest terms, The Claim is a film that for sure may be hard to love, but it sure as heck fire is a film that is easy to admire. Western fans should see it because they "will" take something positive from the experience. 8/10

jake-179 What a total waste. This movie should have been good. It had great actors, great scenics, great cinematography, and no story. Perhaps the story was there, as it was an adaptation of a novel, but the director TOTALLY failed to tell whatever story there was to be had. The director did a great job of finding shots, and making the viewer feel as though he was experiencing a developing mining town in the 1800's, but there was just no cohesion of story telling. The pace of the movie was so slow, it was impossible to follow. One scene sets up, and you think as the viewer that you are going to being to get a feeling of what the movie is about, and then it just trails off and another scene begins. I thought it was especially stupid when the band of guys with guns confronts the band of rail road guys. Everybody pulls out their guns, the rail road guy shoots on of the town guys, and then all the town guys just turn around and walk away like nothing happened. The direction was so soft, so subdued, so poker-faced, that the movie never picks up any momentum and consequently fails in telling any real story. This is a failure of the director. This movie should be avoided. If you are looking for a good western about gold miners confronting greedy town folk, then you should watch PALE RIDER with Clint Eastwood. THE CLAIM was boring and pointless. The only reason I rated it a 2 instead of a 1 is because I thought it was shot well. One last point I want to make is the Wes Bently looked pretty much exactly the same in this as he did in American BEAUTY, sporting the same stupid snow cap. That kind of snow cap is a modern one, with an ELASTIC HEAD BAND, that did not exist in the 1800's. Again, a total failure on the part of the idiot that directed this disaster.

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews Set in California in the 1860's. When Dalglish(Bentley) comes to the small town of Kingdom Come to bring a railroad to it, Dillon(Mullan) must confront the terrible secret of his past, of what happened twenty years prior. I didn't know what to expect from this, and the front of the cover certainly didn't give much of a clue. Honestly, I got it(on sale) because of my seemingly never-ending crush on Milla Jovovich(I can see worlds beyond in her eyes... and for anyone else who might watch this for her, she's in it a pretty reasonable amount, and she is gorgeous, charming, and sometimes pouty and raunchy in it), and as usual, she does a great job acting(everyone in this does) and is a sight to behold. This is the only version of this story that I've seen, so I can't compare it to any other. I haven't caught anything else by this director, either. This moves at a gradual pace. It's an epic drama(complete with breathtaking scenery) set in the same time, but it is not a Western. The accents come and go. This shows how relationships and gender roles were back then. There is a bit of strong language, female nudity and sexuality in this. The DVD comes with the original theatrical trailer. I recommend this to fans of the cast and/or this genre. 7/10

Graham Greene I can see why this particular film (and many of the director's other works) had such a hard time finding an audience when first released in 2000 - what with the endlessly roaming camera and those flashbacks that seem to come out of nowhere - but for me personally, the problems have less to do with Winterbottom's aesthetic choices as a filmmaker and more to do with audiences pre-conceived opinions about the film due to poor promotion and marketing. In my opinion, the film was woefully misrepresented by the people at Fox Pathè (the distributors) and even by the producers themselves, who seemed to announce The Claim as something of a traditional western along the lines of Unforgiven, or even as a precursor to the glossy, chocolate-box picture Cold Mountain (a film greatly inferior to this). Both of these examples are, however, worlds away from the style and atmosphere of The Claim, with Winterbottom and his screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce here providing an almost biblical downward spiral for their central characters that is as far removed from Hollywood as you can possibly get.As you can probably deduce from the title of this review, The Claim is a bleak film, dealing with characters pushed to the edge and pent up with all manner of secret shame, guilt and fury. The story takes its inspiration from Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, but it is in no way a straight interpretation, but more of a re-investigation and analysis into that central predicament. The story therefore becomes a simple morality tale, though made all the more austere through the director's unwillingness to complicate the proceedings with bouts of melodrama or sentimentality. However, Winterbottom's films are merely simplistic on a superficial level. Like his cinematic countryman Mike Leigh, he creates work from a rough sketch that is elaborated on by his actors as the whole process goes along. Thus, in a way, the act of making a film is a lot like the building of the railroad here, and the stark changes that fall into place within the mood of the dwellers of the central town, Kingdom Come, are therefore representative of the always-shifting viewpoints and overlapping narrative time-lines that emerge as the picture unfolds.The railroad that is so central to the proceedings here has a number of meanings subtextually linked to its involvement in the plot. It is a representation of an uncertain future; about change and progress - the complete antithesis of everything that the character of Dillon represents. It is also the device that brings the pivotal outsiders into town (Dalglish, the charismatic railroad surveyor replete with a posse of men, the dying immigrant Elena, stricken with T.B. and finally - and most importantly - the aptly-named Hope; Elena's daughter here in town to search out her long-lost father). Added to this troika of outsiders, we also have the headstrong and exotic Lucile, Dillon's mistress and owner of the local whorehouse where Dalglish's wayward men spend most of their spare time. Here, the remarkable thing is how Boyce manages to bring the characters together, establishing relationships slowly, like an extended chamber piece. As the story progresses, the emphasis on Lucile, Elena and Dalglish become less apparent, as they begin to merge into the not-too-distant background as Dillon and Hope take precedence over the narrative at hand.Despite the numerous allusions and comparisons to Robert Altman's classic anti-western McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Winterbottom's directorial style is more indebted to European filmmakers, like Fassbinder, Kieslowski and Herzog; as he composes his images in a pallet of stark monochrome, with black-clad figures frost-bitten by snow juxtaposing with the void-like whiteness of the locale; all the while using the editing to break or undermine the rhythm (unlike other films of this genre, that are all about 'establishing' rhythm). The Altman references are merely superficial ciphers, with the exterior of snowbound locations, crumbling bordellos and ever-winding railroads giving way to a depiction of obsession and redemption that has more in common with a film like Fitzcaralldo. It is the character of Dillon that really carries the film, as the director singles him out as a lost soul whilst the town he once loved becomes a metaphor for his prevailing greed and anguish; an idea that goes alongside that other figurative interpretation as the town as a literal whorehouse (with Lucile its newly appointed mayor/Madame); all allowing Winterbottom to draw parallels with a film like Quarelle or Lola by Fassbinder or the latter's inspiration, The Blue Angel.That final scene offers us a haunting evocation of pride in the face of defeat and has the ability to work its way into your subconscious via Winterbottom's use of almost universal iconography. A searing depiction of one man's personal redemption played out against the largest scale; with the key elements of power, betrayal, identity, ambition and loss being worked into every subtle nuance of the script to from a rich tapestry of inter-linked vignettes that come together to create a sort-of Greek-tragedy amidst the decline of the 'wild west'. As Michael Nyman's evocative, bombastic, Morriconne-inspired score begins to intensify, the images of Dillon - eyes devoid of expression as he marches through the town slowly crumbling all around him - plays off an early scene in which a horse caught in a munitions explosion gallops off into the hill, engulfed by flames.