MartinHafer "Waking the Dead" is a film that didn't do particularly well when it was first released. However, over time it's gained a small following of folks who love the movie...and it's obvious when you read through the reviews that some just adore it. I tried, but just didn't enjoy the movie like they did, though I have to admit that the film was creative and had an interesting style.The story involves a young man named Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) and his obsession with a girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) who was apparently killed in Chile during the time of the Pinochet coup. In the years that followed, Fielding goes further and further in politics...and loses more and more contact with a healthy reality as he's obsessed with her memory. He even things he's seen her at one point and whether or not he did and what happens next can be interpreted various ways.So why didn't I love it? Well, two main reasons. First, while the film had a lovely style, it also moved glacially slow...too slow for me. Second, and much more important, is that I couldn't really understand Fielding's obsession with her since the two were so different...much like how Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand were different in "The Way We Were"...it just was too different to make the obsession seem reasonable. It also didn't help that Crudup often acted as if he was a zombie...and you wonder HOW he could get anywhere in politics and WHO would support him. Sorry...and interesting idea that just didn't appeal to me.

Jakemcclake I have read the negative reviews and find I do agree with many of them. The movie moves slowly, and has many boring parts. However, the overall feeling when I was finished was, haunted and perplexed.Jennifer Connelly , well she is just Jennifer, and an incredible looking woman. She is worth the price of the movie, just to see her on the screen, even the small screen. Billy Crudup, well I really did not notice him much.Interestingly, this is Jennifer's second film regarding the same activism subject. She also starred with Antonio Bandares in a movie called "Love In The Shadows", about the same subject. I do not think she has any ties to this subject, that took place when she was a three year old growing up in Catskill, New York. I think Jennifer just plays her parts very well and really gets into her roles. The movie also focuses on the US political system, and election process. The movie comments on reasons people do not like the US politicians and reasons for someone to want to be involved in it.Most of all, if you stay with this movie from beginning to end, you will have a question, by the end. You will never really answer it, either. When you see the DVD, you may feel an erie need to answer it, by looking through everything on the DVD and re-watching the movie. But you'll never get an answer. But you should see it and decide for yourself, what you think the answer is.

sol1218 (There are Spoilers) Trying to put his long deceased lover Sarah Williams, Jenniffer Connelly, out of his mind up and coming Chicago politician Fielding Pierce, Billy Crudup, is hunted by her throughout the movie "Walking the Dead" as if Sarah was his guilty consciences.Sarah had been killed in a car bombing some ten year's earlier in her being involved with an organization that protest the conditions in Chile. Being the very idealistic and headstrong young woman that she was Sarah put her life on the line for the downtrodden and underprivileged Chilean peasants that lead to her untimely murder. It was Sarah's selfless actions that sparred Fielding to see her way of thinking. But that only happened after Fielding almost blew his election, for Congressman, which and at the same time had him find his long lost and troubled soul.Trying to cover all the bases, as well as his a**, in his future in politics Fielding played it safe in the Vietnam War by becoming a commissioned officer in the US Coast Guard where being sent to fight in Vietman was practically an impossibility. The very politically ambitious Fielding also played ball with the state and local Chicago big wigs from the governor and mayor on down in order to get himself a plumb job in the city's D.A's office which was to serve as a springboard for his future political ventures. While all this was happening his girlfriend Sarah became more and more distanced from him. Sarah felt that the get to the top at all cost Fielding is just a political climber who's concern from the public, mostly the poor and disenfranchised, was only to get their vote and nothing else.It was Sarah's sudden death that put Fielding's career on hold and took the poor guy some ten years to get over it. Now back in action running for a seat in the US Congress Fielding disregarded all that Sarah taught him about serving, in and out of politics, those who needed his help most. As if coming back from the dead Sarah started making ghostly or real live appearances, where only Fielding can see her, in an effort to spook Fielding by making him more of a feeling and caring human being. The question is if Sarah is actually alive, and faked her death, or only an illusion in Fielding's unbalanced mind! Which may be due to his guilt ridden conscious or the result of a combination of sleep deprivation and prescription drugs, as well as alcohol, in his non-stop 24 hour around the clock campaign to get himself elected?***SPOILER ALERT*** The movie makes it's point in a very confusing way where we in the audience as well as the confused and befuddled Fielding don't really know if the supposed long dead Sarah Williams is really alive or the product of Fielding very fertile imagination. Fielding's last encounter with the ghostly Sarah at the end of the movie gets his head back on together in helping the poor infirmed and financially destroyed in his district to get back on their feet. We'll never know,like Fielding, if in fact it was Sarah in the flesh or conjured up from deep inside his subconscious that got Fielding to do the right thing! But whatever the reasons were, real or imagined, it worked!

laidback_15_53 I have never seen any other movies directed by Keith Gordon so I can't comment on how this one compares to those. Also, I am not familiar with his style of directing so that may be a reason for my opinion of this movie. I loved the acting by Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connally. I also liked the use of the story telling by going back and forth through time. What I didn't care for was the dialogue between the main characters and how, for me, it did not appear to resolve any issues that Billy Crudup's character was having. At times I felt that each of them were having a conversation about two different and unrelated subjects. I didn't experience any type of closure at the end of the movie. Luckily, for me, when I decided to watch this movie I had no expectations as to what it might be like. If I had, I probably would have been even more disappointed.