Absolutely Fantastic

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The pacing is good, the violence serves the plot, and is not over the top. The camera work isn't flashy, and distracting from the story. The lead female is absolutely beautiful, I've seen her else where, will look it up later.Action and gore folks stay away.....I wish there were movies made along this style these days......PS fellow reviewers, I don't think rehashing the whole story is needed.. That said, I felt very misled by some of the reviews here, I almost didn't watch the movie, glad I did. The Noir analogies made me want to give it a try.....Long live Noir........

Mos Def plays the Bob Cratchit clone, called Wemba here (on his own time, Wemba is studying to follow in Cratchit's footsteps as a bookkeeper, a dead giveaway of director Eric Eason's remake intentions). Wemba works as a dishwasher for brothel owner Sinatra, aka Rosso (Scott Glenn)--the Scrooge-like character. Sinatra gives Wemba a chance at a new life, if he can pull off the sale of a fortune in cocaine left behind at the brothel when the Mr. Fezziwig stand-in (The Russian=Johannes Sioberg) is gunned down in a murder-suicide by Mrs. Fezziwig (Carla Esposito here) in a tragic love triangle involving Sinatra's original drug mule, Baaba (Henry Babatunde Fadayumi). All Wemba need accomplish is to exchange the coke for the money-filled backpack of the Spirit of Christmas Past, aka Bosco Tang (Faroouq Olawale Sadia).Unfortunately, Sinatra's partner (the Jacob Marley character), his son Paul (Brendan Fraser), is still alive, and wants to get his hands on both the coke money and Fanny Scrooge, known here as Angie or the second Mrs. Sinatra (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Paul also believes he's the actual father of his step-brother Tiny Tim, dubbed Lazar (Luke Denis Nolan) in this retelling. In an effort to learn why Wemba is late returning to the brothel, Paul sends his personal thug Rodrigo (Milhem Cortaz, in the Undertaker role) to kidnap the Spirit of Christmas Future, the blind seer (Rui Polanah) to learn which way the cookie will crumble.Meanwhile, Wemba has made the exchange, but he's knocked unconscious by the two Collectors (designated as such in both the 1951 and the 2006 renderings). Fortunately, his cash pack is still at hand when the Spirit of Christmas Present--Monique (Alicia Braga)--comes to Wemba's rescue. Before he can return to the brothel, Rodrigo guns down Monique, as well as the clairvoyant's seeing-eye dog.Back at the brothel, Paul already has sliced open the face of this movie's Mr. Groper, the transsexual prostitute Nazda (Matheus Nachtergale), probably because Nazda had earlier snuffed out Baaba's life. The disfigured Nazda returns to Sinatra's office just after Paul has informed his dad he's confiscating all the drug money if Wemba ever returns. Nazda shoots Paul twice, Paul shoots Nazda once, and then Nazda puts two more bullets into Paul, blasting him to his death in the courtyard way below the broken-out office window. Nazda dies of his own bullet wound a moment before Wemba finally brings home the bacon. Rodrigo is hot on Wemba's heels, but Sinatra and Rodrigo exchange fatal shots, with the brothel owner bestowing his wife and money upon Wemba before expiring. The Seer looks on benignly as Wemba, Angie, and Lazar prepare to depart. Unbelievably, the Spirits have accomplished Wemba's transformation in a single night!While this remake was okay, I still am most partial to the 1951 version of A CHR!STMAS CAROL, aka SCROOGE, starring Alistair Sim in the title role.

Film Noir (literally 'black film') was a term created by French film scribes who noticed how 'dark', downbeat and black the textures and themes of many American crime and detective movies finally released in France following the WWII. (Films they hadn't been able to see under German occupation.) These B&W flicks initially came into vogue in the '40s, became more popular in the post-war era (especially as B-films, played behind more conventional cinema from Hollywood) and lasted up until the classic "Golden Age" to about 1960 -- or maybe 1958 -- as "Touch of Evil" is usually cited (by film professors) as the end of the classic noir period.It's interesting to note that film noir is not a genre, but rather a mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film. This tone can be blended with other genre's to form a most satisfying effect (most recently, the film "Brick" exploited noir conventions in High School setting!).Caper films, with its intricate plotting and criminal-characters existing on the periphery of society are some of the most significant examples of famous noir works. Most feature a "tone of pessimism, and darkness" and mainly share the form's visual style. But their main focus usually lies in the way they detail the strategies of the crime, that typically end up in fatal outcome, suggesting that there is a moral order to the universe, and that bad guys should not succeed.Crime Capers fall into several categories. In recent times, we've seen the jazzy stuff produced by Guy Richie and Soderbergh. In the 70s, we saw the existential masterpieces by Melville. In the eighties, we've seen caper films that were really romantic comedies at heart. Indeed, the fusion of capers has made its way into many a sub-categories heading.The same can be probably said for thrillers, although less fusions exist with classic thrillers. This category usually sticks to increasingly tense dramatic situation and if anything, veers into the realm of action films. Note that both "Fatal Attraction and "Basic Instinct" feature action set pieces that could easily be cut into a Bruckheimer film.JTTEOTN is not a caper film, a thriller, an actioner or even a straight noir -- its all those things, and none of them. "Journey to the End of the Night" suffers (wrongly) from being a not "instantly categorizable" work (not in the marketing sense, but in the processing sense; i.e, how our brains orient to story: who am I supposed to root for? Brendan Fraser? No. Scott Glenn? No. Mos Def, yes, finally, but not wholeheartedly, because even the saintly Wemba is a drug runner who undertakes his mission solely out of greed). Its these types of transgressions that play against the contemporary mores, and a viewer's desire to enjoin and identity (within the first ten minutes) with a hero. Still and all, I would argue, that it is precisely this break with convention that has such an a lasting effect on the viewer. And makes JTTEOTN a most powerful post-modern noir.

I also watched the film at Tribeca and found it as a whole work to be interesting and entertaining. Sure there were flaws in the film itself but in total I enjoyed the camera work, the colors and the actors. I didn't have a problem with any of the actors on the screen. I thought Brandon Fraser was cast in a role that he normally doesn't play but that didn't take away from the movie if anything it added to it. He definitely had a presence on the screen as did Scott. The characters were also justified in their actions. Don't get me wrong there were flaws in the film I just felt that they were minimal. I went in expecting to watch a film that wasn't going to be very good and I ended up seeing something that I though was entertaining and interesting. The main character was not Brazil, there are movies where the city is the main character and the actors are there to move it along. This was very much character based film.