 
REVIEW:
Poet Thomas Janes (Sean Penn), looking for all the world as if he's been forced to swallow a bottle of castor oil, deigns to accompany his journalist wife (Catherine McCormack) on a research project, investigating a 19th-century murder on a remote New England island. Their companions for the boating journey are the poet's brother (Josh Lucas) and the brother's hotsy-totsy girlfriend (Elizabeth Hurley). As the contemporary story is interwoven with the 19th-century one, unruly passions come to light. Call this Possession for nihilists. Director Kathryn Bigelow is up to something more ambitious than Neil LaBute's film but doesn't quite achieve it. It's not that Sean Penn makes an unconvincing poet-he doesn't. More that Alice Arlen and Christopher Kyle have written a screenplay (based on the novel by Anita Shreve) whose reach exceeds its grasp; the characters are meant to be complex, but all they are here is deeply unpleasant.
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The Weight of Water
Release Date: November 1
Starring: Catherine McCormack, Sarah Polley, Sean Penn, Josh Lucas, Elizabeth Hurley
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
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Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.