Movie Review - Things We Lost In The Fire

I walked into the theater only knowing that Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro were in it and that it was about a woman whose husband dies. That's it. I thought it would be fun to see a movie I knew nothing about beforehand. Let me go on the record for saying that Benicio Del Toro absolutely repulses me. Every movie he's been in, I have suffered thru his scenes. I don't think he's a very good actor and out of the hundreds of scenes per movie, there are maybe two where he's not smoking. Smoking does not bother me, but when you can't say more than two lines without having a cigarette in your mouth, that's distracting. This movie was no exception.

But despite all that, I liked this movie.

Movie opens up with a man walking by a pool with a young boy. You later find out that the boy is his son. Then you cut to a woman crying and holding a little girl and you realize that the man was her husband and he is now dead. He was killed because he tried to help out a domestic squabble and getting in the middle, he was shot. Then you cut to a funeral scene and the woman realizes that someone was left off the list, so she sends her brother to go tell this man in person (because he doesn't have a phone) and you later find out this was the husband's estranged best friend. Estranged because the woman doesn't like that the friend is a recovering heroin addict and a bad influence on both her husband and her children. Eventually she feels sympathy for her late husband's friend and she lets him move into the recently fixed up but vacant garage where he forms a bond with both her and her kids.

Mostly a drama sprinkled with funny parts here and there. LOTS of flashback moments to where you're not really sure what is really happening now vs. what already happened. (Did I mention how much I hate flashback movies?) And another one that had a weird title. Because based on the title, you're thinking that the husband was one of the things they lost in the fire, when that had nothing to do with his death.

The meaning behind the title: There was a fire in the garage (where she let the friend stay) and she was heartbroken over the photos and baby items that were destroyed while he was calm; and when she questioned why he wasn't more upset over the things they had lost in the fire, he told her that they were just things. She and their children were most important, so as long as they still had each other, nothing else mattered.

Several odd directorial shots in my opinion. Many upclose shots of her face....so much so that you could see the fine black hairs on her cheeks and you could count how many eyelashes she had on one eye. And a few "ewww" moments like when the friend was smoking used cigarette butts. But despite all that, this was a very good movie and I almost didn't regard Benicio as completely repulsive...almost. :]

Vixy :]