Hereafter

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)

Clint Eastwood has confirmed at least one thing once again, and that is that he can still make compelling stories whose main charm lies in the dense emotional power of a few individual moments (stealing a phone, for example). It's a purely conversational film (except for the opening action scene) whose strength lies not in its tightly and compactly constructed plot or in the deep profiling of its characters, but above all in Eastwood's approach, which I'm not afraid to describe with words like "mature" or "seasoned" and, above all, still relevant – in the sense that Clint still has something to say. It didn't tear me up nearly as much as Changeling, but it was an enjoyable two hours nonetheless.:) (03/07/2011)

Hereafter is certainly not a film for everyone (not that Clint Eastwood has made such films before). It is a quietly dramatic story full of emotion, it’s civil, human, comforting... Somehow it seems to me that the afterlife and contacting the other side is one of the very last things it’s concerned with. In fact, I'm tempted to compare it to Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only with aliens swapped for the undead. There are a number of extremely impressive scenes of all kinds in the film (hiding from the social services, tasting food with blindfolds on, bypassing the media - the impostors, and of course the opening wave...) and each of the three stories manages to captivate and intrigue. The ending is absolutely beautiful. And I don't mind that it's a pure happy ending without any question marks. (12/14/2014)

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)

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)