Jacob's Ladder (Matt)

Well this turned out to be quite a gem of a movie. After reading the description posted here I was intrigued and as it turns out that reaction was justified. This movie was one of the more original films I have ever seen.

Lets start with Tim Robbins. Wow. This guy is underrated in my opinion. His name should be right up there with the greats. Everything I've seen him in he has been amazing and this movie was no exception. The character that he was playing was really a complicated person and he made it totally believable. I can think in particular of a scene where he is overcome with a very high fever and he is forcibly placed into a bathtub filled with ice water. He had to show us a character that's sick and delirious, at the same time the character is in immense pain from the ice water and wants out but he can't escape the many people holding him in the water. It will be a while before I can get that desperate look that he had on his face out of my head. Pretty powerful stuff.

The story itself was really unique. I won't go into much detail here as I don't want to give any major plot points away but it's fairly safe to say I've never seen anything like this before. The story had a bit of a Mothman Prophecies feel to it, but that's not completely accurate because the stories are very different. The similarity in the two stems from not knowing what is real and what is not. I spent the whole movie trying to figure out what was going on and to be honest after it was over I still wasn't sure. It took a conversation with the co-writer of this blog before I got a solid grip on it and once I did I knew this movie was a winner.

The only negative I have about this movie is that I really had a hard time figuring out what was going on. As I just mentioned, I didn't get it until after the credits rolled. This can be both a pro and a con however depending on how much you enjoy thinking about a movie after you've seen it.

This beauty gets 8.5 sleeping demon hobos out of 10.

~Matt