The movie goes downhill pretty fast and just left me feeling bored and slightly troubled. It's a movie about the Amanda Knox murder case about which many people have strong feelings. Only it's not really about the Amanda Knox murder case. The movie starts out and ends up dedicated to the memory of murder victim Meredith Kercher, but just winds up being all about the unraveling of a depressed director. He has an affair. He snorts a lot of cocaine. He reads a lot. He has a lot of crazy nightmares. For me it was a complete nonstarter. I still don't get what it was about. Lets just say 'The Face of an Angel' goes round in circles and winds up getting nowhere. The movie was really boring and the story didn't make a lot of sense. Good acting but a cast of shallow characters you won't care about. As the plot moves forward the movie loses its thread more and more

Barbie Latza Nadeau's novel based on a true event has been transformed (or mutated) into a screenplay by Paul Viragh and the result as directed by Michael Winterbottom is a fine scenic tour of Sienna, Italy – and little else.The story is based on true events - a journalist (Kate Beckinsale) and a filmmaker (Daniel Brühl) lose themselves in a notorious murder case they are covering – the controversial case of a American student accused of murder (the victim in truth, one Meredith Kercher) in Italy. Somehow the story gets lost in translation but if you can get past the fact that this is more of a fantasy film than reportage portions of can be entertaining. It does allow a primarily Italian cast to look great and decorate the already visually stunning sites of Sienna.

'The only way to really tell what happened is to fictionalise it - that's the only way to get to the truth' - Words to this effect are said at the beginning of the film (I can't be sure of the exact quote and would never want to see it again) so I thought okay, I see where they're going with this. Change the names so we can explore everything that needs to be said about this case. What we got however is an incoherent, uneven, self indulgent piece about a coke sniffing delusional film maker who fails to connect with either the story or the people around him while trying to write a script about it. Maybe that is what happened as a result of the director trying to make this film, but then okay, don't make a film about that! The memory of Meredith Kercher is lost here and becomes almost as irrelevant as the title of the film which tries to have a clever double meaning and fails on every level. When I heard this film was in the works under the stewardship of Michael Winterbottom I thought it was going to be in safe hands. He is a brilliant film maker. No stranger to the world of true life drama stories but something went really wrong here. The film feels like it became a parody of what a film maker goes through when trying to make a film of this type - which is complex and difficult to get to the truth of, while that is as maybe this is completely the wrong subject and material with which to explore those issues - For one thing its about a true life murder case when an innocent girl with her whole life ahead of her was brutally murdered and those responsible appear to have got away with it. I was expecting a film with real balls which was going to take on the known facts of this case which captured the media attention of the world and work through them methodically and give some much needed clarity to areas of the case which have been portrayed with ever increasing conflict in the media. If the Kercher family were hoping this film would in anyway give them a sense of closure or at least bring some light to the darker areas of this case, how disappointed they must have been. I find it hard to understand what attracted the cast to the material though Daniel Bruhl is on form in the leading role and redeems himself well but do we really need to dodgy CGI monsters induced by this drug taking? An extremely badly misjudged film which hopefully will be forgotten very quickly.

It boggles my mind how studios pay money for movies like this one. Even worse, because it's not a typical account of the events surrounding this story and more about finding an interesting angle around it, they even have scenes with studio executives that have looks of horror on their faces when the Director talks about how he wants to make it into the trash that it became. Still, they went ahead with it. They must feel like complete fools and I'm guessing such a high valued actress like Kate Beckinsale has her regrets as well.It's just a pretentious pile of poop in the end. Hypocritical as well since it tries to put itself above the trash journalism surrounding this story but ends up putting in the same sensationalistic crap that 'sells' stories. So lame.I was even more disheartened when I saw a few of the UK Utopia actors, Alistair Petrie and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett in the film. They must be gutted being in this one after being in such a great one like Utopia.Thank you for wasting my time BBC Films, Cattleya, Multitrade, Revolution Films, Vedette Finance and Ypsilon Films. There's obviously not a sensible one in the lot of ya.