Wow. Awful film, and such wasted potential! Despite a strong cast, led by Liam Neeson and Antonio Banderas, and a talented director (his last film was the gripping Notes on a Scandal), The Other Man is dull, dull, dull. Scenes don't gel, each character is wafer-thin, the half-asleep stars go through the expected motions without conviction, etc. The entire enterprise has a grotesque presumptuous air, too, as if the producers thought A-list talent, stylish shots of architecture in London and Milan, and a Very Serious (read: joyless) tone were enough to disguise the absolute absence of intellectual curiousity or a reason to exist. I can muster just minor praise: it is well-shot in a European, high-gloss way, and the ever-fetching Romola Garai delivers a compelling performance as Neeson and Laura Linney's daughter--a fairly thankless role.

It's almost as if the director set out to create the most frustrating, least involving film ever. So much of this should be poignant and/or exciting--marital betrayal, fashion, chess, chasing a man through the streets of Milan--but it never catches fire. It's frigid. It just...sits there, on the screen, doing nothing.

D