Fragments (DVD, 2009)

Forest Whitaker (Who won an academy award for his role in The Last King of Scotland) stars in this drama along with Kate Beckinsale (Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) Guy Pearce, Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning, and Jackie Earle Haley.

The movie is about how the lives of strangers is changed when shots are fired into a local diner.

The acting in this movie is outstanding and the plot is somewhat surprising

It is well worth the money.

Rated 4 of 5 for good acting and a good story.

Well, it has a pretty good cast, anyway: Forest Whitaker, Guy Pearce, Dakota Fanning, Jackie Earle Haley, and Kate Beckinsale. The premise is, similar to Traffic or Crash, that people’s lives entwine in unusual ways. Here the plotlines are connected by a random shooting in a diner, which affects the lives of the characters in different ways.

Pearce plays a doctor who just missed the shooting, but his inability to save one of the victims leads him to start doubting himself and his abilities. Whitaker plays a driving school instructor whose injury is not fatal and who believes both that luck is on his side and that he must somehow atone for surviving where others died; Fanning plays a young girl whose father is shot and killed in the robbery and who turns, perhaps overly so, to God and religion to help her deal with the tragedy. And Beckinsale plays a waitress saddled with a baby she neither wants nor takes proper care of, but which she uses as a tool to try and get closer to Pearce’s doctor.

It’s not a particularly pretty film. Most of the characters are weak and ultimately self-destructive. It’s hard to root for any of them as their lives after the accident unfold (Pearce alternately sickens and cures his wife so he can appear to be her savior; Fanning drives a friend who was with her to near-suicide and total isolation with her religious zeal; Whitaker gambles away his savings and then an additional sum from a nasty loan shark; Beckinsale endangers her infant with neglect because she’s selfishly interested in her own pleasure), and at times the film can be downright unpleasant to watch because, well, all of these people are jerks. I’m all for reality in films, and that was obviously important to those who wrote and directed this movie, but I’m also interested in having someone I can empathize with, and, despite some pretty strong performances, there’s simply no one here I could find myself caring about. In a character-based movie, that’s death.

Whitaker I felt stood out; his character wasn’t very sympathetic but he gave an excellent performance. Ditto Fanning's performance is solid and sharp. If she merely stays this good as she ages, we’re already looking at the actress of her generation. The rest of the players are pretty good, but none of them bring the strength and depth that these two do. Pearce is good, but any one of a dozen other actors could have filled his role; ditto Jackie Earle Haley and Beckinsale. Everyone does fine with their roles, but most of the cast doesn’t imbue the characters with anything special, which all of them are capable of.

If you’ve seen Crash or Traffic (or even Babel, which I didn’t care for as much), you’ve seen this type of movie, done better. Unless you really dig one of the leads, you could probably skip this film and not miss much (heck, it wasn’t even theatrically released and isn’t even known by this title on the IMDB, which tells you something).

This movie is good because of the stars, but it is definitely no "Crash". Kind of boring and I wish I would have rented it instead of buying. Just ok.

I purchased the movie because of the excellent cast. It's rare to find that many well known actors in a single movie.

Great character depiction of what happens when people witness an atrocious, meaningless, crime and how they deal with the after effects.

This move was a really touching movie, my teens and i liked it it was very different, but touching movie. it was well worth the money and with some of our liked actors in the movie i would tell everyone to watch it once