holy smoke is about a woman that gets sucked into a hindu cult and her family hires a man to break her of it. it's set in Australia. the cinematography is great and the acting is believable, but the script is not. as the story progresses, there are so many curve balls that it becomes bizarre. it became no longer enjoyable because i realized that nothing i hoped would happen actually did happen. besides the actual story line, there were many details that didn't make any sense. i must say that i watched this movie with no premise except that i like kate winslet a lot. unfortunately, i wish she hadn't taken this role because now i'll have a hard time watching her in anything else.

'Holy Smoke!' begins promisingly, steers wrong and eventually crumbles to dust. But because it features two of the best actors around giving some of the bravest acting that I have seen this is a movie that is hard to hate.Kate Winslet stars as Ruth, an Australian woman who went to India and fell under the spell of a cult guru. To illustrate the spell of the cult there is a wonderful scene the guru places a jewel on her forehead and it turns into a third eye. Ruth's family wants to pull her away from the cult and hires 'cult exiter' P.J. Waters (Harvey Keitel) to bring her to her senses. They fake a family illness to trick her into returning home where Waters takes her to a shack in the middle of nowhere to begin her program of deprogramming.After some quiet moments in which the two engage in a truly fascinating conversation about the meaning of beliefs the movie begins to lose it's way. I thought that this would be a movie about how P.J. uses his experience to break her down and how Ruth puts up the wall of her beliefs as a defense but it doesn't go that way.Waters begins to fall under Ruth's spell mentally and sexually. I could have handled that but it happens so quickly that there never seems to be any kind of power struggle. We are told that this is Keitel's 190th case but I was left to wonder how a man could be successful in 189 cases of deprogramming and fall for this young woman after only two days. The way Ruth brings P.J. under his spell its a wonder the guru didn't fall for her.Much as I hated the end of the movie I cannot dismiss it all together. Winslet and Keitel both give performances that are electrifying. Their sexual chemistry together had me longing for a better story, perhaps these two as an adulterous couple.Keitel has always been a risky actor, taking roles like 'Bad Lieutenant' that many actors would touch with a ten-foot pole. Kate Winslet is taking same track. She hasn't let her success in 'Titanic' be her easy ticket to a $10 million paycheck from Hollywood hot air turkeys like 'Charlie's Angels'. She has continued to seek out challenging roles in films like this and 'Hideous Kinky' and 'Quills'.'Holy Smoke!' is directed by Jane Campion and co-written by Campion and her sister Anna. Campion wrote a similar sexual struggle between Keitel and Holly Hunter in her 1993 masterpiece 'The Piano'. But in that film it was a struggle of personalities where this movie seems to be a matter over mind.

OK. I have to admit I am not the biggest Campion fan. However, I do like Kietel in some films. But Holy smoke is putrid. I really haven't seen a film that bad for a while... and I watched the 1994 remake of Angels in the outfield this week! First of all the cult she is in does not seem that bad. But the grouse caricaturing of cults and religion in general is horrendous. The African-American woman singing the lords pray seems particular contrived. It is just a very low-brow look at cults and religion. Now for the worst part. As others have previously said Kaitel and Winslet's characters are horrible. They are caricature's of caricatures. Kate Winslet pees her pants in a very distasteful scene. Oh the supporting cast. They must be the Campion's sisters in-laws or something. How the hades they ever got into this film I do not know. The token homosexual brothers were actually insulting. I do not know why her homosexual brother did not support her quest for spiritual happiness since he also would have felt alienation at one point in his life. Just please don't watch this film. It is far below par.

It's so hard to find a philosophical movie about India. When I took this movie from the local library (fortunately I didn't pay for it), I was hoping to see a teaser about Buddhism, or at least something funny about sects, but again I was wrong, and once again I understand that nobody in the film industry can make a real movie about India, Buddhism, or inner vacation. It doesn't even get close to this point. Don't search any philosophical ideas in this movie, you'll much more find every kind of porn fantasy: peeing naked woman, two men and women half naked, old man and young woman sex, man having makeup, gay/lesbians, etc. As they couldn't make a real movie, they tried the cheapest catches with naked women. My biggest movie mistake in my life, I watched it until the end to make sure and warn everyone not to watch it and waste 140 minutes from your lifetime, unless you're willing to wake up some sick feelings from strange fantasies. I was shocked seeing Kate Winslet in this movie, I really wonder how they made her sign the contract, it's definitely not the same woman who made Titanic a few years before. If your goal if to see her naked (and more), I'm not even sure it's worth renting this movie. Actors are overacting, I kept asking myself during the whole movie if it was the director's mistake or the actor's mistake, but the result is really bad, I guess they really smoked something while making this movie.