sachintendu04
If I had to write the entire movie, it will take less than 2 short pages. More than half of the movie was filled with music. I finished the movie in like 30 minutes. We don't even know in the end the reason for her attempted suicide. Just a plain boring movie. I won't recommend watching it, just read the summary if you are interested, will save a lot of your time.
l_rawjalaurence
On paper this version of Rattigan's classic looked to have the right ingredients - a visually brilliant director and a top-notch cast. However it turns out to be a disappointment. This is chiefly due to a lack of sympathy with the characters: we do not really understand why Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) should feel as she does, while Tom Hiddleston as Freddie Page is badly miscast. He seems to be under the impression that shouting will reveal the character's inadequacies. Simon Russell Beale is quite good as Hester's husband, but even he doesn't really have much to do. The film also represents an uneasy mix of Davies' and Rattigan's concerns; there are new musical sequences inserted (for example, a scene in a local pub, and a flashback to wartime London) which have strong echoes of Davies' earlier work (THE LONG DAY CLOSES comes to mind), but which deflect attention away from Rattigan's character-driven piece. Weisz does what she can with the material, but in the end we do not really care what happens to her.
Jackson Booth-Millard
Not to be confused with the shark thriller with Saffron Burrows, Ice Cube and Samuel L. Jackson, I know this was a British made film, and the leading actress in it, but I didn't know anything about the plot or concept, so I was looking forward to it. Basically, set in around the 1950's, Hester Collyer (Golden Globe nominated Rachel Weisz) is a young woman married to the older High Court judge Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale), and is having a passionate affair with handsome young former RAP pilot Freddie Page (Thor's Tom Hiddleston) who is still haunted by memories of the war, and he almost feels no fear and excitement in life anymore. Most of the story takes place in the space of one day, when in her flat Hester attempts to commit suicide, she fails to do so and recovers, both the affectionate but no-sexual affair and the constrained but comfortable marriage are played out together through flashbacks. Her affair is discovered, and leaves her regular life of relative luxury for a dingy life in a small London flat with her lover, he has awakened her sexually, but despite his thrill-seeking ways he cannot give her the same love and stability as her husband, but she cannot return to a life with passion, so there is a lot of dilemma. Also starring EastEnders' Ann Mitchell as Mrs. Elton, Jolyon Coy as Philip Welch, Karl Johnson as Mr. Miller, Harry Hadden-Paton as Jackie Jackson and Sarah Kants as Liz Jackson. Firsty, the title is derived from the lead female character's dilemma of being caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea – two equally undesirable situations, I think I know what that means, going with your conscience or going with your heart. Reisz gives a good performance as the woman caught between choosing her acceptable home life or having a bit more excitement with a new man, Hiddleston is also good as the man she embarks on an affair with, the story is relatively simple, based on a stage play, full of strain and heartrending material, it is well acted and produced, and certainly keeps you wondering where is is going, a terrific drama. Very good!
evanston_dad
"The Deep Blue Sea" is one of the hardest kinds of stories to tell on screen. It gives us a character who frustratingly clings to a situation that is bad and painful for her, locks us in her head, and expects us to want the best for her even while we're frustrated with her. It takes the perfect actress giving the perfect performance to make that tolerable.Unfortunately, Rachel Weisz is not that actress. This is one of those films in which I stopped caring what happened to any of the characters in it long before the end. Weisz is a woman in a doomed love affair with a young man (a total jerk as he's portrayed by Tom Hiddleston, so much so that you wonder what attracted her to him in the first place) and with a dumpy husband (Simon Russell Beale) who still loves her. When her lover loses interest in her, she enters into a crisis and carries us along with her. The movie is one sustained note of morose gloominess with little variety, and the nominally upbeat ending is far too little coming far too late.The movie's best assets are its scenes between Weisz and Beale, small isolated gems of acting on both of their parts.And I don't know if it's just because I watched this as a streaming movie on Netflix, but it looked terrible, with colors that looked off and a blurry, badly composed quality that didn't look intentional.Grade: C+
AD
