|
Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product details
|
Reviews
United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Deleted Scenes, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: The story of four lost souls whose lives collide in the parallel worlds of contemporary London and the futuristic metropolis, 'Meanwhile City'. Jonathan Preest is a masked vigilante who won't rest until he finds his nemesis, Meanwhile City's dangerous leader. Emilia is a troubled young art student whose rebellion may turn out to be deadly. Milo is a heartbroken twentysomething yearning for the purity of first love. Peter is a man steeped in religion, searching desperately for his missing son amongst London's homeless. ...Franklyn
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a strange film. The first time I watched it, after about 20 minutes, I thought I'd made a mistake - it seemed directionless and disjointed. But I stuck with it. At the end, I thought 'I've got to watch that again'.
The second time I watched it, I was engrossed from the beginning. It is a really beautiful film, and so, so sad. It's about four damaged people. It's about delusion and illusion. A girl who is trying to make suicide into an art form, a young man whose fiancée didn't turn up for their marriage, a man looking for his son and mourning the death of his daughter. All these people inhabit a thoroughly mundane London. But the fourth lives in Meanwhile City - where everyone, except him, has a religion and non-believers are hunted by the police. The police look like old-fashioned 'Peelers' with high top-hats and dark glasses. Meanwhile City is very reminiscent of Brazil. But the religions are not fanatical - how about 'The Seventh Day Manicurists' - it's simply that you must have one.
The story cuts from the dark, Gothic Meanwhile City straight to the broad daylight concrete ordinariness of Centre Point - it's really jarring and unwelcome, but slowly the stories start to intertwine, the motives and backgrounds start becoming clearer - and the gradually unfolding tragedy becomes more and more compelling. And the end had me in tears.
It's not a sci-fi film, whatever it may be billed as. It's a story about damaged people trying to make sense of what's happened and is happening to them - it's just extreme.
Honestly, it's a mess of a film but it's somehow beautiful, entrancing too. It stays with you. I've got to watch it again.
The second time I watched it, I was engrossed from the beginning. It is a really beautiful film, and so, so sad. It's about four damaged people. It's about delusion and illusion. A girl who is trying to make suicide into an art form, a young man whose fiancée didn't turn up for their marriage, a man looking for his son and mourning the death of his daughter. All these people inhabit a thoroughly mundane London. But the fourth lives in Meanwhile City - where everyone, except him, has a religion and non-believers are hunted by the police. The police look like old-fashioned 'Peelers' with high top-hats and dark glasses. Meanwhile City is very reminiscent of Brazil. But the religions are not fanatical - how about 'The Seventh Day Manicurists' - it's simply that you must have one.
The story cuts from the dark, Gothic Meanwhile City straight to the broad daylight concrete ordinariness of Centre Point - it's really jarring and unwelcome, but slowly the stories start to intertwine, the motives and backgrounds start becoming clearer - and the gradually unfolding tragedy becomes more and more compelling. And the end had me in tears.
It's not a sci-fi film, whatever it may be billed as. It's a story about damaged people trying to make sense of what's happened and is happening to them - it's just extreme.
Honestly, it's a mess of a film but it's somehow beautiful, entrancing too. It stays with you. I've got to watch it again.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This film did not get well reviewed on release, but I have to admit that I liked it a lot. There are three characters in three plot strands set in present day London. They are all people dealing with loss and vacancies in their lives. The forth character is also dealing with a similar painful loss, but his way of coping is to retreat into an alternative city, called Meanwhile, and so his strand is distinctly sci-fi. This vaguely steam-punky (and very Gothic) city is neatly meshed with the real London, with regard to both the plot and how the vast computer-created vistas blend with bits of real London. There's much filming around the Naval College in Greenwich, as ever, with the roofscape of the Victoria and Albert Museum featuring too, I think, and the interior of the Royal Courts of Justice. I think that if this film had done without the sci-fi bits and had a name like Michael Winterbottom attached to it it would've got better reviews, and been very much less interesting.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Blu-ray
A mysterious masked man called Jonathan explains that he is going to kill someone that night, we then get the backstory leading up to this event...
...His retrospective tells of the grip of religion, how it is used for social control, and how he is investigating one such religious group who have abducted a girl - one whom he is tasked with rescuing. After learning that the girl was killed he is arrested and gaoled, only to be released four years later on condition that he kill the man responsible for the girl's death. Freedom and revenge - a sweet deal.
This is filmed as a dark fantasy with massive gothic buildings and impressive cityscapes which look like something from Tolkien blended with Blade Runner. This contrasts against the other plotlines which are set in contemporary Britain. The dark fairytale and the modern stories both have parallels, the same characters appear and the plots intertwine. It feels a bit messy at first but after a while you can see how the stories are starting to converge and eventually they intersect, the separate plots come together and we see where the stylistic gothic plot involving the masked man originates.
I heard that many people gave up on this film after watching for a while and finding the various sub plots dauntingly difficult to understand, but everything makes sense in the end, and if you can't see it coming after while then you'll certainly recognise it during the final scenes. Franklyn seems to have been marketed in away which appealed to fans of comicbook action films only to disappoint them. I must admit that I thought it was along those sorts of lines, but it isn't. It isn't an action film, though it certainly does have some action early on, it delves into the psychology of several different people whose lives are linked by different events.
In a nutshell: A film which appears to be a comic-hero fantasy with a damning take on religion and the apathetic masses who blindly follow a religious yet Godless society in a grim future, turns into a drama involving a complex web of relationships which are cleverly weaved to come together for the films finale. Impressive visuals enable two parallel realities to exist alongside each other and keep you wanting to know the relevance of it all.
...His retrospective tells of the grip of religion, how it is used for social control, and how he is investigating one such religious group who have abducted a girl - one whom he is tasked with rescuing. After learning that the girl was killed he is arrested and gaoled, only to be released four years later on condition that he kill the man responsible for the girl's death. Freedom and revenge - a sweet deal.
This is filmed as a dark fantasy with massive gothic buildings and impressive cityscapes which look like something from Tolkien blended with Blade Runner. This contrasts against the other plotlines which are set in contemporary Britain. The dark fairytale and the modern stories both have parallels, the same characters appear and the plots intertwine. It feels a bit messy at first but after a while you can see how the stories are starting to converge and eventually they intersect, the separate plots come together and we see where the stylistic gothic plot involving the masked man originates.
I heard that many people gave up on this film after watching for a while and finding the various sub plots dauntingly difficult to understand, but everything makes sense in the end, and if you can't see it coming after while then you'll certainly recognise it during the final scenes. Franklyn seems to have been marketed in away which appealed to fans of comicbook action films only to disappoint them. I must admit that I thought it was along those sorts of lines, but it isn't. It isn't an action film, though it certainly does have some action early on, it delves into the psychology of several different people whose lives are linked by different events.
In a nutshell: A film which appears to be a comic-hero fantasy with a damning take on religion and the apathetic masses who blindly follow a religious yet Godless society in a grim future, turns into a drama involving a complex web of relationships which are cleverly weaved to come together for the films finale. Impressive visuals enable two parallel realities to exist alongside each other and keep you wanting to know the relevance of it all.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
The divine status of the 1200rpm spin cycle
You can't fault McMorrow's aspirations - FRANKLYN is an ambitious film, especially as a first-time feature, and although he's overstretched himself somewhat, this is an interesting... Read more
Published 29 days ago by sft
Trying hard to be clever
From seeing the trailer I was expecting a lot more. The three stories that are supposed to be connected are quite boring, and it's not entirely clear what connects them. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Cam
Meanwhile ...
This film is trying very hard to be clever but only really succeeds in "trying" very hard to be clever. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Shrewlord
"If you believe in something strongly enough, who's to say if it's...
Revolving around four lost souls and set in two parallel worlds, Franklyn certainly isn't the Dark City/superhero movie it was rather misleadingly sold as but a rather more... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Trevor Willsmer
Disappointing
The opening scene introduces you to the dystopian Meanwhile City, reminiscent of the metropolis in Terry Gilliam's `Brazil', where the intriguing character of Franklyn (Ryan... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Colt
Gloriously gothic and enormously clever fantasy
After half an hour of this movie I almost gave up on it.
Sure it looked marvellous and it conjured forth faint echoes of works I admired like Dark City, Brasil and... Read more
Sure it looked marvellous and it conjured forth faint echoes of works I admired like Dark City, Brasil and... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Cartimand
Surprisingly Different...
Released at the same time as 'Watchmen', people may have gone into this having watched the trailer expecting more of the same given it's focus on the dystopian bleakness of... Read more
Published 22 months ago by W. M. Young
Over-ambitious mix of fantasy and romantic realism
Franklyn is a creditable but over-ambitious effort by a first-time director, Gerald McMorrow. What it isn't is `The Matrix [meets] Donny Darko' as the DVD pull-quote suggests. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Paul Bowes
May appeal to film buffs, otherwise avoid it.
The trailers made this look spooky and interesting, which it could easily have been. However it proceeds at a snails pace with not much explanation of what is going on. Read more
Published on 9 May 2010 by Charles Gosling
Dull
The fantasy scenes were superb and what a film that could of been on its own, but the kitchen sink drama that made up the rest of the move was painful, the characters were... Read more
Published on 9 May 2010 by S. M. Paskey
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
