This is really one of the worst films I've seen this year. I had heard it pretty much universally panned by critics but I really didn't expect it to be that bad. As bad as I had heard this movie was, I still couldn't help my curiosity with director Tom Tykwer. I would have to say I consider myself a fan of his, even after this last effort. I would also say that the shortcomings of this film are primarily the fault of the screenplay and not the direction.
The writer was Eric Singer and this was his first major motion picture. The plot was extremely choppy and many of the key points made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Some of the conspiratorial points of this film were not only left unexplained but the portions of which were explained proved them to be completely unnecessary. The dialogue was even worse than the plot. At one point, Naomi Watt's character is confronting Clive Owen's character about details in his past. He very gruffly (Clive Owenly) responds, "I'm not gonna talk about it. Just read my file." about half an hour later, we are explained the details of his past by Naomi's character who had "made some calls." Unfortunately, the information she finds is not important to the plot and by this time nobody cares anyway.
The cinematography of this film was pretty good. It was shot by Frank Griebe. I am a pretty big fan of his work with Tykwer. I thought 2006's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is one of the best shot films in the past 10 years. Unfortunatly, even great cinematography could not have saved this film.