I rented House of Sand and Fog.
I was disappointed. It sucked.
I wasn’t sure I was really up for it because I was expecting it to be all angsty and depressing. The story was unfortunate. Thankfully the movie not all that gut-wrenching.
When a clerical error causes a recovering alcoholic to lose her house, it is bought at auction by an Iranian immigrant who is struggling to reestablish his family in America. With the fates of both the troubled Kathy and the proud Colonel Behrani and his family hanging in the balance, the house becomes the object of a complicated and tragic conflict.
It’s set in San Francisco, so that was kinda fun (okay, and mildly depressing) seeing if I could recognize anything.
The whole thing between the evicted woman and the cop who evicted her was weird. He’s unhappily married with kids, he has a soft spot for her which he has a weird way of expressing, yadda yadda yadda, gratuitous sex. And then he leaves his wife? For this woman he evicted from her house? And then he wants to go to the house and play bad cop and intimidate the family? Meh.
The details on the Iranian family’s backstory could have been filled in a little better. I got the basics. He was a general who got booted amidst some unrest, they moved to America, he’s busting his ass at menial jobs to support a lifestyle they can’t really afford. But I still felt like I was missing something.
I’m not big on Jennifer Connelly. I hoped she’d give me a reason to like her in this film, but she didn’t. Ron Eldard’s cop character sucked. No development whatsoever. Ben Kingsley, however, can do no wrong. He did really well with the shoddy material he had (until the very end). Shohreh Aghdashloo was hands down the best part of the movie. Amazing. She totally deserved her Oscar nomination.
I guess the actors can’t help it if the writing sucks. Cheesy dialogue and ridiculous plot leaps. If they were gonna leave so much out, they could have made the movie a little shorter. An hour into it I was ready for the wrap up to start.
I had heard good things about this movie. I wanted to like it. I think I would have enjoyed the book better. Although I’m told the book sucked ass, too.
