Is there any reason why Woody Allen should continue subjecting us to these morality tales? If you want to see the Abel and Cain-esque moral fallout that happens when two brothers once so close get in over their heads, you’d be better off watching “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” with Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Woody Allen can still weave a good yarn, but he’s still too talky, and not in a good way. Woody Allen is a natural comic talent, yet he has this more “serious” side that deals with the choices that you make. This is Allen attempting to be Dostoyevsky, attempting to tease out what happens when you murder someone. Do you, like the Ewan McGregor character, move on and get on with your life, or do you, like the Colin Farrell character, get beset by personal demons and fear of God’s censure?
Allen isn’t bad at what he does, it’s just that for those of us who are (very) familiar with his oeuvre will find this a bit more boring and repetitive than those who have not, though I think the latter, even without the benefit of having seen the rest of Allen’s film, will have little difficulty in reaching the same conclusion.
One last note: Colin Farrell’s “I’m in the midst of a terrible moral quandary” look in this movie is quite similar to the one he uses in In Bruges, with the latter being the more endearing of the two because he’s a bit more crass in the latter, or in other words the script and the dialogue of In Bruges gave Farrell a lot more to work with than did Woody Allen’s script for Cassandra’s Dream.
