Premonition

I don't pretend to be objective when it comes to Sandra Bullock movies. She may not exactly be my favorite actress but she most certainly is the actress I feel the most emotional loyalty to even though I know that is geeky at best.

Bullock's latest movie Premonition is her second movie in a row that deals with a warped sense of time. Last year's Lake House which had an even goofier plot than Premonition was better because despite the time differential gimmick, it was at its heart a wistful and mostly effective romantic story. Premonition on the other hand suffers because given the rules the movie's story creates, it doesn't make sense that Sandra's character would behave in the manner she does.

If you know something bad (like your husband dying) is about to happen and you know the events that led up to that moment, and you had memories (premonitions?) about the incident, wouldn't you do your darndest to do everything you could differently to see if that changed the outcome of things? The movie never quite deals with this issue, and it just doesn't make sense that Bullock's character never: a) questions her own sanity; b) tries to convince others that she in no uncertain terms knows that her husband is about to die; c) doesn't even try to talk to her husband much about any of this.

Instead the movie dives just below the surface to have Bullock's character trying to wrestle with the moral dilemma of discovering that her husband is about to have an affair and thus wanting to allow his death to occur before he hurts her and their two daughters.

With the exception of the two Ms. Congeniality movies, I have found something I've liked in every Sandra Bullock movie although none of them even in my warbled mind with the exception of Wrestling Ernest Hemingway is without its flaws. Premonition has plenty of interesting closeups of her face requiring her to convey a steady but bewildered state of mind. She gives about as good a performance as she could have possibly given conveying this questioning faith. But in the end it isn't so much that the story doesn't make sense, it's that the story has more holes in it than the shattered glass window that plays a major role in the plot.

The movie looks good, the acting is effective, but it left me wanting to ask Sandra why she chose the script in the first place. I would guess she would say something about being attracted to its supposed unconventionality. Instead, peel away the artful look of the film and the wannabe deep meanings and what we're left with is something totally unconvincing. Something tells me she's smart enough to know that even if her Premonition character is not.