cinemajesty In the aftermath of "The Hours" (2002), how women experience time, "The Burning Plain" (2008) directed by original writer and first-time director Guillermo Arriaga breaks under the weight of a director's responsibility. Giving the full independent package of a 20 Million U.S. Dollar production budget by producers Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes and professional cast going out from Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger over Joaquim de Almeida to an early motion picture participation of Jennifer Lawrence to create a story of a struggling woman's life through the ages from 18 to 50 years.Director Guillermo Arriaga, unable to create any suspense in any given scene of full frontal character conflicts; Actress Charlize Theron strives through the scenes uninspired to sedated, just dwelling from early hard knock life experiences, at no moment challenged by the director to break through with her character of Sylvia to step on uncharted territory of psychological terror after a girl's life changing mother-murdering incident.The well-written screen-story gets hardly translated to screen, lingering in too slow, if not to say insufficient shot pacing, wasting Robert Elswit's talents as Cinematographer. Director Guillermo Arriaga, seemingly uncomfortable in the director's chair, focuses on scenes on female self-mutilation and further draining from his characters' obsessions and sex addictions. The visuals, embedded in an U.S. Mexican Border Town and cold steel urban area cliché, misses surprises to release the spectator's running low interest in the female fates.Positively to mention is the on-screen chemistry of Kim Basinger & Joaquim de Almeida, who left on their own to create a heart-breaking, doomed to fail love story. Actress Jennifer Lawrence, in her Pre- "Winter Bone" (2010) days, seems to be overwhelmed, undirected by Guillermo Arriaga and close to lost by her on-screen actions in the character of Mariana of murdering mother and her lover in a trailer gas explosion.When the incident scene happens at running time marker 01h21mins00sec (PAL version), Director Guillerma Arriaga missed out to build an accelerating sequence with Editor Craig Wood to make an emotional impact for an arresting conclusion of woman's life wasted. Probably solution might have been to rearrange the editorial's structure entirely with taking the incident into the film's opening, which would have brought Jennifer Lawrence arguably a breakthrough performance under improved directions to carry an entire picture of her shoulders at an minor age; A fact that needed to mature another two years until her breakthrough at Sundance Film Festival 2010 with her leading role in "Winter's Bone".In conclusion, "The Burning Plain" had the ingredients to be a solid psychological drama. But through lack of thriller elements, with a cast put into breathtaking tension mode and accelerated action beats, lets the film vanish into mediocrity.

David_Brown This is a film with three Oscar winners (Basinger, Theron, and Lawrence), and none of them are any good (both in character (particularly Lawrence who abandoned her baby of two days), nor in acting). I could watch Basinger in anything and like it (except "Cool World"), because I am a fan of hers, and there is nothing boring about her, but here she is essentially lame. The only one who is worth watching is Tessa La (Maria), the daughter of Lawrence who grows up to be Theron (who seems to sleep around why every guy she meet to the point of being a nymphomaniac). What is pretty pathetic, is she is 12 and is the closest thing to be an adult (and this is not a kids film). Spoilers ahead: At the end of the film, she is the one who left Mexico to come to the US, and find her mom, after her dad had a crop dusting accident, and reunited the family. I give it two stars only for her.. Otherwise, it would be a total waste.

cesetevi a very strong story.at the beginning I think there's two separate story line.when Sylvia calls the lying man Santiago everything falls into its place.There is something I find not plausible.when Mariana lets pipe loose what does she think will happen? obviously it's gonna blow entire trailer.this aside, movie tells a woman's life who is gonna have to face his past which she tries to escape all her life.she kills her mother and her lover.she keeps this secret herself and tries to cope with this by sleeping every man she meets which is a way of hiding her guilt.she also tries to share this guilt by burning his hand with her mother's lover son.Just to make her history to present a sign of love.however it is in reality not a love, a guilt.she tries to hurt himself escaping being loved by a man.she can't bear this pain and leaves his baby with his father behind.she maybe treats her baby a product of this guilt.when she learns her daughter had a scar when she was 3 years old she later asks her forgiveness,feeling that guilt again.this movie is full of drama.it takes you from a woman's life who had breast cancer to another woman's life who had killed her own mother just to punish.Afterwards she tries to punish herself.movie ends without a resolution.I wonder whether she's gonna tell him how she killed her own mother and his father? the father of her daughter? even her daughter?

sheep13-1 The messy back-and-forth in time action is not the worst problem of this production. There is some intensity which could make this a not-too-bad movie anyway. The actors are not to blame either. On first impression the plot is about love, more or less.But there is a hidden agenda here: both blond women (mom and daughter) are presented as whores. On top of that, the blond mother is also Christian, praying every evening. But of course a hypocrite, since she is committing adultery. The Christian white dad (who fathered 4 children) is actually an impotent male... Enough, I'll never watch anything else made by this Arriaga guy.