Doubt

Soon as I heard that Philip Seymour Hoffman was in a lead role in a new movie I immediately got excited. Unfortunately, when you hype up a movie too much it must live up to high expectations which most of the time result in disappointment, which is how I felt at the end of this movie. But don’t get me wrong, Doubt is a good film, just don’t hype it up too much.

Doubt is set back in 1964 at a Catholic school in the Bronx. At this church a nun (Meryl Streep) suspects something foul is going on between a priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a young black student. She squares off against him to get him removed from the church. This proves to be a difficult challenge given the fact she has no real hard evidence.

The acting in this movie was amazing. Hands down, top notch acting by both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Philip is easily becoming one of my favorite modern day actor. For no real reason, I was never particularly a huge fan of Streep but this movie really changed my mind on her. I now have great respect for her talent. Amy Adams did an excellent job with her smaller supporting actress role. The drama between Hoffman and Streep was done very well, there was even a point in the movie where I got goosebumps from the argument that they were having. The movie was filmed very well, some interesting and unique camera angles. Not an easy thing to accomplish in such a dialog heavy movie such as this.

Since it is such a dialog heavy movie, I can definitely see this not being a movie for everyone. It’s dry, slow moving, and not a lot of action throughout. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I really do enjoy movies with those characteristics. I think the thing that hurt it the most is the conflict took too long to develop. Also it was lacked a strong plot, it’s entertaining, just not very complex.

So if you want to see some superb acting, look no further than Doubt. Just be warned that it’s a pretty dry and slow moving film that’s not for everyone.