Waste of Money.

Admirable film.

Absolutely brilliant

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I've watched this film a number of times over the past 3 or 4 years. Last night, I put it on for my godson (24 yrs.) and his buddy after we watched "Open Your Eyes". Not a bad double bill, by the way. They were appropriately stunned by the filmcraft and, of course, the slow reveal in the third act.My question this morning, though, is what has Jon Shear done lately? I came to "imdb" to search his more recent work. There's nothing listed! Is it possible that Shear hasn't been able to launch another project? His work on "Urbania" is great and completely promising.When will we be treated to another film from you, Mr. Shear?

. . . that the other reviewers give this movie such glowing reviews. I thought it was an OK film, but certainly not great. This is basically a story about a gay man seeking to personally avenge the gay-bashing murder of his lover. That plot alone would be a little bleak, so I can buy the introduction of the quirky street characters. Adds a sense of realism to the NYC setting. The bartender getting paid a couple hundred buck to expose himself to a woman, and then inheriting a a large insurance payment when she dies in an airplane crash - OK, we're starting to stretch things a little. But, the introduction of the Urban Legends stuff. C'mon - that's clearly brought in to try to camouflage the main plot & attract a wider audience, and an excuse to name the movie something sexier than "The Gay Bashing Avenger." This movie has nothing to do about Urban Ledgends, and the title is misleading.

U will cry and ull love this by the end of the movie. Futterman is excellent in this odyssey and misleads u quite often as to what the real plot is.As I was watching the film, I must admit I was tempted to stop it as I couldn't see where it was going. U will not understand until the very end what did really happen. Its like a present wrapped in too much paper and taken different shape than what it really was. A very different approach of homophobia in NYC that will make you think....Again. Well done Dan Futterman! keep up the good work.

I'd had this taped but unwatched on my Tivo several times over the past two years, because its reviews during its theatrical release described it as so dark and depressing. It appeared again this week on IFC, and this time I trusted my Tivo's suggestions. It's dark and ambiguous: both a noirish exercise in style and a surprisingly poignant, necessarily non-linear, study of loss and grief, with excellent performances by Dan Futterman as Charlie, a skilled supporting cast, and an all-too-brief appearance by Alan Cumming (whom I usually don't care for when he's playing Britoid fey, sexually ambiguous roles as in Julie Taymor's _Titus_). Anyone who can quote Glenda Jackson from _Sunday, Bloody Sunday_ and invite Charlie to stay and watch _Women in Love_ with him is a friend of mine. Given that Cumming's native Scottish accent verges on outtakes from _Trainspotting_, I appreciated how perfectly he sounded as a NYC aesthete.[potential spoilers]It may be simplistic to treat this as a revenge fantasy, and this may sound cold (and defiantly oblivious to the real-life cases) but gay bashing as a dramatic theme requires all the artistry a writer can muster, and after seeing it treated mawkishly 24 or so years ago in NYC in Torch Song Trilogy (with Harvey F. and Matthew B.), I'm inclined to view every attempt since as another exercise in agitprop. I'm not sure that Urbania completely avoids this, though it wins points for its indirection.The final scenes in his former lover Chris' "apartment" seemed like eerily prescient outtakes from today's _Dead Like Me_ or _Six Feet Under_, and the symbolism was surprisingly unsubtle. And I would swear that that Chris' tufted off-white Mies Van Der Rohe chaise-longue was featured in this week's NYTimes.Finally, maybe it's deliberate or just me, but I thought that both his former lover and the neighbor upstairs looked exactly like tidied-up versions of the street thug and were all played by the same actor. Even though they weren't, you might appreciate all three of them as variants of Charlie's "type" (would they be "Charlie's Angels"?)