Ripple Effect (2007) Reviews

• What a pity that this movie is not well-known as it deserves...

  ShahramMirkhani2008-10-12

  It's a long time since my last comment but I felt it is necessary to write something for this beautiful, sensitive, meaningful and exceptional movie. The strange thing is many have written almost worse-than-negative and because of my respect for common idea, I cannot and will not fight with them... ...No, actually my problem is why people are getting more nonsense and more stupid day by day??!! With all due respect to Hollywood productions like fantastic 4, The Dark Knight and many many other movies (which I have seen and will see and enjoy), it is a sin even to compare this movie with them. This movie is a dramatic, meaningful movie which benefits from its good acts (almost all the actors and actresses are great, specially Forest Whitaker and Philippe Caland), its really nice and well-tailored story, its exceptional music and every other aspects of cinematography that I can remember. All I can think that people are so unkind to this movie is just conspiracy!! and I do not know why. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND TO WATCH THIS MOVIE FOR THOSE WHO THINK THEY CAN THINK....

• WATCH....don't fast forward.

  jackcornieth2008-08-02

  GOOD MOVIE....and unlike the guy before, i didn't fast forward through it, I WATCHED IT. if you decide to see ripple effect while receiving phone calls, cooking dinner or fast forwarding through it, there are so many more titles I would recommend for such an evening. Ripple effect is a movie about characters, that cannot be defined in "genre" terms. It is not an action/drama/comedy/horror/etc...kind of movie that fills the pipes and feeds the tiger, and as a result, may not find broad appeal. At first I was engaged by the writing and the acting, but I gradually realized that I was watching a special movie that tried to (and managed to) be different from everything else....and for that alone, hats off to all who made it happen. I have great admiration for the main cast forest whitaker/virginia madsen/ minnie driver, for taking a leap of faith with this film....stars of that level usually don't venture into such "out of the box" movies, but ripple effect worked for me, and I am sure that others who WATCH it, will feel the same.

• jeezis!

  imizrahi20022008-07-25

  SHOOT that other reviewer...you have my permission... i fast forwarded through most of the film past the first 35 minutes and it was STILL some of the most painful 50 minutes of my life... and i've had dental surgery with no anesthetic... i'll tell you what happened here. some wannabee hollywooder has some money and somehow gets a few decent(actually, very good...even if they didn't get to show their abilities in THIS film) actors, one with a big name, to be in his film... VOILA...you're a 'hollywooder'. and THEN someone OBviously connected to the film, and this happens WAY too often to my liking...it's just gotten more and more obvious that this is the case, since i KNEW from the quality of the writings i've seen that these people are not illiterate...so they KNOW they're reviewing a piece of crap, even though they're praising it to kingdom come... someone i assume is connected to the film writes a glowing review... or even SEMI glowing... i kept on thinking...OK. so when is the real movie going to start... that's 10 lines, right? i've wasted enough time on this piece of crap but i HAD to set people right since there was only one review before this and i would like to save OTHERS my experience...

• Hit and run

  jotix1002008-04-23

  As the movie starts, we watch a man on a lonely road at night, walking. We hear an impact and naturally, we think the man has been hit by a car we don't see. After the titles, we are taken to a shoot for a clothing sports line using the label Trash. The main force behind the clothes is being photographed with a hot model. This man, Amir Atrash, seems to be on his way up in the fashion industry. Well, things don't go too well for Atrash, who has to cut expenses when the investment bankers that are behind a deal to take the label to the stratosphere, have cheated on the contract that would make the designer a millionaire. He walks out the deal. Atrash, who has a lovely wife, is not a happy man. This explains why we see him at a party where a paraplegic man is among the guests. Atrash follows him, and his wife because he has a thing to tell Philip, the man on the wheel chair: he was the one that struck him and is responsible for his present condition. This film written, directed and acted by Philip Caland, was a surprise when we stumbled into it recently. "Ripple Effect" is an engrossing film of redemption as the guilty man has carried a burden within him for a lot of years and now, when we meet him, he wants to ask forgiveness as he tells his victim what happened that fateful night. Some of the great cast that was assembled are also producers of this picture and it helps explain how comfortable they feel playing their roles. Forest Whitaker is the paraplegic man. Philip Caland plays Atrash with conviction. Also seen the gorgeous Virginia Madsen, Minnie Driver, Kali Rocha, John Billingsley, among others. The haunting music is by Anthony Martinelli. The fantastic editing was done by two men who know a thing or two about movies, Yvan Gauthier and Joseph Semanse. The camera work by Daron Keet also enhances the film. While no doubt this film will be liked, or dismissed, it's worth a view by discerning viewers.

• Really?

  ritera12012-01-09

  The only reason I picked this up was Forrest Whitaker. I've seen several of his straight-to-DVD items and they're usually interesting to very good. I don't know if I want to know the background of this, 'cause I probably would get angrier. I would have to assume the director, writer and star (one guy) is Mr. Whittaker's and Ms. Driver's celestial guru, or some nonsense like that. It doesn't help that the "hero" starts out as an arrogant douche who insists on calling his wife and child "beybee" 60 times in the first 1/2 hour. All that was missing was the gold chain around his neck. So this guy runs his business into the ground, despite the fact that everyone around him loves him. They really love him. Adore him. It helps that he's also the writer telling his actors to love him. I don't. Then, at his breaking point, he has to right a wrong he did years ago. That's holding him back, although it's unrelated to the present events. (I should say it was entertaining to hear Ms. Driver fall into various accents throughout the film.) Then another 40 minutes of blahblahblah and we're done. Many other reviewers were basically calling this "intellectual" Sure. They just forgot the word "claptrap". At least the star/director/writer is consistent. A consistently bad actor, writer, and director.