Hereafter

Don't be swayed by the negative critical response from individuals who didn't understand it, this is a great film. Eastwood deals with the autumn of his life, when one must unwillingly be confronted with the inevitability of death, and he does it the way he does it best: very sensitively and empathetically. It outlines Moody's view on death and life after life, but in a non-violent way, he does not impose his opinion and through the fate of three people marked by the loss of a loved one, or the life experience of clinical death, he sensitively tells his story. And I have to say, I've never been so pleased with Matt Damon's acting, his subdued performance as a mature man surprised and delighted me. (03/03/2011)

Clint Eastwood wants to say everything and despite the very restrained pace, he ultimately says barely half. And I don't remember a similar half-decayed idea in his modern era. I understand all the moods and all the plot lines fit together nicely, but I don't understand why a purely philosophical drama needs over two hours, in which nearly half of the running time is just slow dialogue stepping. Hereafter has power in individual scenes (the introduction, the subway, and cooking), but unfortunately, it slips through as a whole. (09/15/2011)

Just today an airplane carrying some Czech ice hockey players crashed in Russia. So Hereafter seemed to suit this sad day. Clint hasn’t got soft, just older and so he said to himself that he would film the requisite pensioner’s ruminations about death and throw it to an audience hungry for his movies. A stylish opening with a tidal wave (that ingenious scene must have swallowed most of the budget) turns into a conversational drama of three people whose destiny becomes (unexpectedly) entwined and everything ends up sort of ok. The picture is overflowing with excellent acting performances, just the screenplay is sometimes too blabbermouth. (09/07/2011)

Clint Eastwood decided to shoot a film where he combines several different storylines into one in the end. We have the amazing Cécile De France playing a French reporter who almost died in the tsunami in Thailand, Matt Damon, who connects with the dead through human touch, those who were close to him, and finally two boys, twins, who can take care of each other until one of them dies. The film has its strong moments, which Clint handles brilliantly, but overall, it is a bit naive and simple, and in the end, it turns into a beautiful fairytale, which can't have any other ending than a happy one. But don't we deserve films where characters find a bit of their happiness? Don't we deserve a bit of unreality, something to uplift us when we need it? I feel like this is exactly what Clint had in mind. The world around us is cruel, death awaits us, we can't escape it, certainly not forever, so why not enjoy the life that is given to us, why not hope for something better. At the end, it doesn't have to be just a dark tunnel, there can be light. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2012/04/jumper-babel-kung-fu-divocina-miami.html (02/17/2013)

An extremely interesting idea alone can't hold an entire film together. The impressive start is soon displaced by an unusually long and uninteresting story that, by Eastwood’s standards, teeters on the edge of massive kitsch. The attempt to incorporate as many fantasy elements into the plot as possible is understandable, because without them everyone would probably get bored. The performances are also top notch and save what they can, but none of this has the power to plug the huge hole of untapped potential that mars this otherwise very unconventional movie. (06/30/2012)