Successful shoe designer Lisa (Laura Linney) dies from cancer leaving her husband Peter (Liam Neeson) and her daughter Abigail (Romola Garai). Peter is a successful software entrepreneur. He discovers a voice message from a mystery man looking for his late wife and he cracks her password for a hidden cache of love pics. His security team uncovers her lover as Ralph Cortez. He goes to Milan and befriends Ralph without acknowledging his wife. Abigail begs him to stop his angry obsession.This is a great cast but the drama isn't there. There is no tension. There is a possibility of a dramatic turn but it goes in the opposite direction. There is a surprising reveal but it doesn't add to the drama. There is a message here as long as the audience is awake to see it. This is a short movie and yet it feels overly long.

The story of a husband (Liam Neeson) who suspects his wife (Laura Linney) of adultery, and sets out to track down the other man (Antonio Banderas) in her life.Frankly, I was not all that impressed with this film. What redeems it is the strong performances from both Neeson and Banderas, who could eat up screen time and entertain just by the way they deliver their lines. The game between them is tense and emotional, but also well-crafted.The actual plot was just alright. I do not know that it was handled in the way we might expect a love triangle to be handled, and if the way it was happened to be the right way at all.

This isn't a simple film. It's a film that plays with time to tell a story encompassing love, jealousy, anger, loss and pain. It covers the gamut of emotions one feels when betrayed and follows the path a man goes down as he discovers his wife has had another love.I loved Liam Neeson's descent into jealous rage and the discoveries he made about himself, his family and his relationship as he discovers secrets from his wife's past. A moody film, perfectly adapted to its subject matter, you feel drawn into Neeson's character's despair.It's not the best film I've seen recently but it's one I'm glad I saw and would heartily recommend it to others who are willing to think a film through its details. The acting's good and both Liam Neeson and Laura Linney carry the plot well. Antonio Banderas plays a less rounded role, but still does so enjoyably.Definitely a film worth watching.

In sexual terms, The Other Man is like having some pretty good foreplay but when you finally get around to doing the deed, the man's erection completely disappears. It slowly builds your anticipation, only to leave you with nothing but disappointment and frustration.Peter (Liam Neeson) is a successful businessman. Lisa (Laura Linney), his beautiful wife, is a shoe designer for high fashion. Abigail (Romola Garai), his daughter, is in love with a scruffy looking guy of whom Peter disapproves. After a cryptic post-fashion show conversation with Lisa, the film jumps ahead to Lisa being dead. That's when Peter discovers she was having an affair with a Spaniard named Ralph (Antonio Banderas). Peter compulsively seeks out Ralph (pronounced Rayf) and discovers her lover doesn't know that Lisa has passed away. Peter befriends Ralph and gets him to talk about Lisa and their love, seemingly as a prelude to killing him. But then Peter discovers the truth of who Ralph is and the reality of his feelings for Lisa and…well, I'm not really sure how to describe what happens after that. I mean, I could describe it, but you'll think I'm making it up because it's really that ridiculous.The first half of this film is quite effective. It treads a line between being an emotional drama and a thriller, always leaving you in of suspense about what's going happen. It subtly defines Peter as a man who's been unable to function since his wife's death until he finds a purpose in her adultery. You can see him wrap his arms around Lisa's betrayal as though it's brought her back to him and you can feel the tension build in him as he descends on the man who cuckolded him.After delightfully tantalizing the viewer, however, The Other Man goes irretrievably flaccid. All the emotion, all the investment, all the interest is killed deader than Napoleon's boner. That's because at the moment when the movie finally brings Peter and Ralph face-to-face, it goes into a string of intermittent flashbacks that continue through the entire 2nd half of the film. It's flashback after flashback of Lisa and Ralph, Lisa and Peter, Lisa and Abigail and it just destroys the story because all of the flashbacks displace the conflict you've been waiting the whole 1st half of the movie to see. You want to see Peter and Ralph interact. You want to see Peter play a cat-and-mouse game with the man he intends to kill. You want to see Ralph slowly start to wonder who this stranger is who keeps asking about Lisa. You want to see anger and jealously and hatred slowly seep into their conversations before exploding into the truth. And none of that really happens because the damned flashbacks get in the way. Peter and Ralph don't have one extended talk that doesn't get taken over by a flashback and it utterly derails all of the momentum built up in the story. To use sexual terms again, it's like watching an x-rated movie and in the middle of every sex scene, an image of your grandma pops up on screen.Now, Laura Linney does get naked, which remains a very good thing. She, Liam Neeson and Antonio Banderas also try hard, but Neeson and Banderas' characters are so frequently interrupted and displaced by all the damned flashbacks that they never get the chance to do more than sputter.The Other Man is half good, but the other half is so vexing that it ruins the whole thing. Unless you're somebody who only likes foreplay, don't bother with this motion picture.