Travolta's best work ever and one of the few movies in a New Orleans setting that sounds like someone actually visited New Orleans at least once before they made the movie.

Just saw it on TV. Great, great movie.It makes me want to read the book.It is an absolute shame that it did not receive the publicity it needed and not be shown in all the big theaters.Also, in my opinion, it has a silly, unappealing title. Should have stuck to the title of the book.I hope it will get renewed interest now that it is showing on television.If it does get a second life, maybe the actors will not feel the disappointment they must have when it did not do so well in the past.

A better title? The last hit by Bobby Long. Was this production underwritten by R.J. Reynolds? I've never seen so many cigarettes smoked in a single film. Or maybe it was just product placement gone wild? You can expect Travolta to be smoking as he does in almost everything he does, but every main cast person? By the way, it really doesn't take ten lines to express the visual problem with this film, but that's what the "guidelines" require. Who creates these "guideline"? Not every film reviewed is "Gone With The Wind", how about updating the guidelines so that shorter and to the point comments can be included? I can understand having an upper limit so that it doesn't get out of control, but a minimum of 10 lines?www.boskolives.wordpress.com

The European market is overflowing with US productions and most of the times we - the European public - manage to appreciate what is thrown at us from Hollywood. However, some movies truly get lost in translation. This one is a perfect example. New Orleans and the Louisiana are almost always depicted in movies as a country quite different from the rest of the US. The folks living down there are portrayed as unpleasant, racist, Gothic, mysterious and incredibly weird. Not mention drunkards. Given this background we are also given two big stars (Travolta and Johansson) and a couple of minor characters. The whole story is basically about Travolta trying to win an Oscar and Johansson trying to do the same. Both characters talk a lot and everything else sinks under the weight of their lengthy and boring dialogs. There should be something involving painful stories from the past and a bit of redemption, but nothing in the plot goes beyond mediocrity.What gets lost in translation is the whole Southern setting which probably should bring something to the story, but to me it meant only that people in Louisiana are not very elegant.The main thing I retained from this movie is that two big stars accepted to appear in less than attractive make-up and clothing and to look like regular people (a refreshing sight, I have to admit). Unfortunately, I felt not the slightest involvement in their allegedly sad story exactly because in these days huge stars alway play OTT (the secret agent, the slick assassin, the millionaire seductress) and are quite unbelievable as normal people.Boring, boring, boring movie.