User reviews

A film producer who escapes death by murder and chooses to lead a simple life afterwards, a group of good Mexican gardeners, a second-rate movie actress who becomes jobless, a police officer who is not happy with the filing of his case, a Salvadoran maid whose family has been shot by death squads, a NASA employee who knows too much and his old father who doesn't want to exchange his old typewriter by a computer, a mysterious project of ending up violence in the world by putting everyone under surveillance, with all those ingredients what could a movie director have made? Surely an excellent movie. This one however is too much ambitious and produces rather poor results in comparison with that ambition. Where the contrast between dream and reality, love and greed, poetry and vulgarity could have been explored we are left with a story not bad in itself but not very deep and not especially moving.

You don't turn to Wim Wenders when you're looking for nerve-tightening suspense. Though written (by Nicholas Klein, with Wenders) in paranoid-thriller form, the script lacks even a nubbin of McGuffin to anchor the narrative. Two stories run in parallel: Bill Pullman's an action-film producer gone missing after an attempt on his life; Gabriel Byrne's a NASA computer jock on loan to a mysterious satellite surveillance project. Just as yuppie cop Loren Dean is on the point of tying the two tales together, the movie's over, the plot unresolved.

Oh, well: Los Angeles (mainly Malibu, Santa Monica, and Griffith Park) looks great (cinematography Peter Przgoda), and Wenders has an uncanny ability to get actors to feel comfortable in their skins. The most notable skin in question is Traci Lind's: her role as a stunt-woman turned aspiring actress would have made her a star in a more mainstream movie.

If you're a Wenders fan, don't let the commercial failure of this film put you off: Compared to, say, 'Far Away, So Close' it's as electrifying as 'The 39 Steps.' And somehow, as usual, Wenders's almost childlike intensity of gaze makes you look harder, too. The aroma of the film lingers, even as its substance slides through your fingers like sand.

"The End of Violence" is a clutter of stick figures wandering through a messy story about some sci-fi "big brother" government project being tested in Los Angeles. The film trades interesting characters for interesting situations, connects the dots too late revealing too little, and ends in a self absorbed coma about as flat as warm beer. Nonetheless, the film has a respectable cast, a garnish of neo-Beat poetry, a brooding noir feel, a good soundtrack, and some husky-voiced philosophical narration by Pullman making it a par watch for the needy couch potato. (C)

How 'bout a four? Visually, there are some great moments. I think the most interesting scenes are those where there is no dialogue but the camera follows the characters as they inwardly contemplate what this all means (Bill Pullman, Andie McDowell). Unfortunately, we as the viewers are also given (too much) time to contemplate what it means. Everything is WAY too understated. The movie slows to a stop in many places. You start to like it (the romance with Kat and the investigator, the interaction of Bill Pullman's character and the Mexican-American people) and then it doesn't follow through. The dialogue at the film school, in which the characters give a monologue for a class is probably the most interesting dialogue. Some rap, some tell a story, some recite their own poetry. That was the most moving part of the movie. While Wenders has a important point to make, it doesn't come through clearly and the viewer is left uncaring, uninterested. Maybe the only thing that could have helped the End of Violence is more good ole fashioned...violence <g>.

I don't think I've ever seen a movie that is so cerebral yet so poor at the same time. Wim Wenders is certainly revered in the film community for his offbeat ethereal productions (i.e. Wings of Desire), however, nothing profound or comprehensible can be extracted from his latest effort. It is as if four or five scripts were dropped in a studio parking lot by some clumsy intern and what was left was thrown together so that somebody wouldn't get fired. There are some common links between the characters but what does any of it have to do with the underlying plot of satellite surveillance? I kept waiting for the film to decide which plot it thought was most interesting, but it remained undecided to the very end. This was a frustrating experience to say the least.

The most aggravating aspect of this film is the fact that none of the parties involved appear to incompetent, so how is this movie so bad? Maybe I missed something...

The one saving grace of this film is the performance of Udo Kier as a German director. He alone mutters the one or two lines that managed to get me to crack a smile during this disaster.

Wim Wender's The End of Violence is a rather disjointed and uninvolving piece of film-making. It wants to be a tale about how violence affects our lives and how, once exposed to it, we find ourselves fundamentally changed. It might actually succeed if it wasn't busy confusing the audience and boring them to death at the same time.

As the film opens, we are treated to a day in the life of Hollywood producer Mike Max (Bill Pullman), who is busy wheeling and dealing through multiple phones and computer connections, all the while ignoring his wife, Paige (Andie McDowell). While he is out during the day, he is kidnapped by two not quite bright hit men who are killed in a mysterious fashion and Mike Max manages to escape. He is found dazed by some Latino gardeners and Mike decides that he needs to hide from his old life to protect himself while discovering that violence, which he has peddled in action movies, is a bad thing. Meanwhile, Paige has taken over her husbands company in his absence and developed a relationship with a recording artist named Six (K. Todd Freeman) who provides the love she was lacking in her relationship with Mike. Also meanwhile, technical whiz Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) is busy putting the finishing touches on a high-tech surveillance system that the government hopes to use to bring violence in the city under control. However, Ray begins to suspect that the system is possibly being used for nefarious purposes and is trying to get someone to listen to him. And yet elsewhere still, stuntwoman turned actress Cat (Traci Lind) is getting her big acting break in Mike's latest film, and she finds herself somewhat smitten with detective Dean Brock (Loren Dean) who is investigating the disappearance of Mike.

As you can probably tell from the above paragraph, The End of Violence has a lot going on. The problem is that little of it is compelling and because the film is busy juggling so many plot threads at the same time, several of them seem like afterthoughts. The subplot featuring Paige's involvement with Six, for instance, has absolutely no emotional resonance for the audience because we barely know these people. The film also takes a lot of side trips to inexplicable scenes where people gather at performance art sessions to get some bigger message across, I guess, but they just end up being pointless and drawing the film out even more.

Wenders manages to suck the life out of most of the scenes in the film. The acting is uniformly wooden and unconvincing, the characters are little more than bodies going through the motions, and the plot is half-explained and developed. Take the plot thread of Ray trying to discover the truth about the surveillance system. It is revealed eventually that he has actually already been in contact with Mike about it with the hopes of revealing the system to the public, but the film has so many pieces moving around that it takes forever to make the connection between those two characters.

The film also features dreaded voice-over monologues that are just silly and pretentious. The anti-violence message, what there is of it, is also heavy-handed, to say the least. In one scene, Six speaks to Mike on the phone and gives us a long explanation about why violence is good and people revel in it. You can practically see Wenders on his soapbox while this scene is going on.

I suppose this movie is supposed to be a thriller to some degree, but there is little that is thrilling about The End of Violence. It is a monotonous bore of a film that comes to a rather abrupt ending without really dealing with all of the issues it seems to want to explore. Instead of an end of violence, I'll take an end to this particular mess.

This film was just shown on United Kingdom television at three o'clock in the morning and it took me totally by surprise as I had never even heard of this movie before. Its a good movie but I just wonder how much of an influence the David Lynch film "Lost Highway" had on the casting of Bill Pullman, he's a decent actor but whatever happened to his career? He seems to play these type of roles very well and its a nice surprise when Gabriel Byrne pops up on-screen. If you get the opportunity to watch this film then its definitely worth a look-in if you need to pass a few hours of time. Often the direction behind the film could be improved and their are some loose-ends which could really do with being tied up but some of the imagery and ideas are of sound mind and as thrillers go this is from a good period in the genre. As registered in the "Vote" section I could only give this film a six out of ten due to the average directing and loose-ends. If you like Lost Highway by David Lynch and also featuring Bill Pullman then "The End Of Violence" is another film you will enjoy

It didn't feel like it had any central thread. Nothing really grabbed my attention. There were a number of promising potentials, but they were never followed up on. Through most of the movie, I didn't know what the hell was going on, and I wondered if the whole thing was Wenders' private joke.

Many of the characters were either annoying (actors playing their pretentious selves), or just big blobs of nothing.

Pointless non-sequitur slug of a movie.

A movie about the business of making movies in all its vacuity and of recording things on camera. This is Wim Wenders' "Le Mepris" and his "Rear Window", (it's all about looking and not about seeing), and it's full of movie references. Sometimes they are about the only thing to distract you from all the ennui and the lack of anything remotely interesting happening up on the screen. In place of believable characters and a decent script or lines you might want to listen to Wenders fills his screen with images that are supposed to engage us on a movie-buff level. The film's like a game pseudo-intellectuals play; you fill in the blanks and if you can guess the better film the blanks come from, all the better, you get brownie points. In other words, this is pretty terrible, the kind of unmitigated disaster only a great director could make when he starts believing his own hype. I mean, Wenders can't lay the blame entirely on the cack-handed script; after all, he co-wrote the original story with script writer Nicholas Klein. I was going to say it goes deeper than that, (or aspires to), but deep isn't really a word you want to use when reviewing this pile of horse dung. OK, it looks terrific; what more can I say? Oh, except he talked the legendary Samuel Fuller into appearing in it and he's terrible, too.

I watched this movie a few times, and I have met very few people who liked it as much as I did. I see it as an artful expression of all the critical thoughts in philosophy, sociology etc. that show how genocide, ultra-violence and fascist methods of population-control can develop out of all the promises of order, justice and peace the the modern state makes to its citizens. Also, the dialogue has absolutely superb moments, as when Mike the fugitive of the state says to his wife confronts his ex-wife with the words "Who can I turn myself into? Well I see who you turned yourself into...". A lot of people seem to dislike the loose ends and unexplained shifts that the characters make - but I say, in that very absence of rigid structure the film makes a parallel to the manifest ambivalence of modern life as a citizen: Our greatest protector is also our greatest threat.

The End of Violence. Define it. Well, I'll try... Ciby 2000. The late 1990's. Irony. Satire. Subplotting. I could go on, but I won't.

The casting scared me at first, Pullman, Byrne, MacDowell. Not exactly a dream team for me. More like the other way around. But, they work surprisingly good portraying these characters.

The story is complex. And the subplots are many. And most of them both unusual and interesting. The dialogue is smart and often very funny, but not in the punchline-laugh-here kind of way. More like the punchline-by-the-way-smile kind of way.

The End of Violence is not at all as pretentious as its title. De facto, compared to Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin it is down to earth. But neither is it near the masterwork of Paris, Texas. But The End of Violence is better than its reputation. And the overall casting is very successful. Particularly I think Loren Dean and Traci Lind stand out. They both deliver some great ironic lines and the super cool Lind acts in a film in the film (where the director is played by Udo Kier) in which The End of Violence makes fun of itself in general and Hollywood and the whole American movie industry in particular.

The End of Violence works better as a satirical film than a big-brother-is-watching-us and the-government-is-after-us film. They just seem to can't get those right, can they? But there are too many already, that is even if you don't count The X Files.

One of the most disjointed films I have seen. It almost seems like the had material here for three or four distinct movies. One was a government conspiracy style movie. The second was a traditional "cop investigates a murder and falls in love with one of the people he meets" movie. The third was how wealth and corrupt relationships and twists reality into a ball of twine.

One positive was the photography. Nice cinematic shots of cities and other scenes.

Attn possible viewers; This is the biggest stinking pile of crap I have ever wasted my money and time on. I wish I could have that 2 + hrs of time back. I would rather watch all of the Friday the 13th movies consecutively. I cannot believe sweet little andie McDowell took a part in this peice of garbage. I believe my opinion has been expressed. People - Drill screws through your feet, it will be less painful. Disgusted and Embarassed, Mr. Hipp

Bill Pullman is okay as Mike Max, a veteran Hollywood producer who's made his name with a succession of violent action pictures. One night, he is carjacked by two hoodlums, only to escape and spend time hiding out with the family of his Mexican gardener. He doesn't seem THAT interested in finding out what truly happened that night; meanwhile, the film also follows Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne), a lonely man operating a high-tech surveillance project out of Griffith Park Observatory. A young detective called "Doc" (Loren Dean) tries to make sense out of the Mike Max disappearance.

The intentions of celebrated German director Wim Wenders are certainly good, as he and his screenwriter Nicholas Klein set out to examine, and ruminate over, the "psyche of Los Angeles". His desire was to paint a multi-faceted portrayal of a city beset by paranoia and violence, a city which fascinated him. Given that Wenders himself is not fond of the proliferation of violence in cinema, "The End of Violence" shows us very little. Unfortunately, this picture of his suffers from a slow pace and a sometimes meandering nature. It's really not that involving, with very few characters we can genuinely care about.

Among its assets are the widescreen photography (this was Wenders' first film shot in 2.35:1), and the excellent, flavourful soundtrack composed by guitar great Ry Cooder.

The wonderful assemblage of acting talent helps to maintain interest even when the story doesn't. Traci Lind is a standout as a lovely stuntwoman being groomed for a career in acting. Andie MacDowell is barely passable as Mike Max's neglected wife. A sombre-faced Byrne does get to share some scenes with the legendary filmmaker Sam Fuller, who plays his father. Sadly, Fuller would pass away shortly after production wrapped. Other familiar faces include Rosalind Chao, Pruitt Taylor Vince, John Diehl, Nicole Ari Parker, Daniel Benzali, Marshall Bell, Frederic Forrest, Udo Kier (a hoot, as always, as a film director), Henry Silva, Peter Horton, Michael Massee, and O-Lan Jones.

Ultimately, style triumphs over what little substance there is in this forgettable feature.

Six out of 10.

Well, it is a poor movie, nothing happens, ever!!, but that's no reason, I mean if you saw Stranger Than Paradise (1984)of Jim Jarmusch you see a movie were nothing happens but still rules, anyway, I think Wenders sold out, he started with this movie, and later selling his "Wings of Desire" script to hollywod, very disappointing!

This film went way over my head. It involved a government conspiracy of some sort in which hi-tech spy satellites were being used to lower the murder rate. I liked the picture, but understood little about what the story was all about.

Great actors, characters and story building up to a dissatisfying oh-my-god-it-can't-be-yet ending. It's almost a cruel joke that in the movie is an aborted movie production. Am I just not deep enough to see the point? I must be so shallow that it seems like the original writer/director/producer team were all shot before the movie was done and the cleanup crew left more loose ends than a tide of Malibu seaweed. There is a beautiful little existential paradox and message. But we were so much enjoying the story and all the substories and loving the characters that to just quit on us like it did was cruel. The inbred credits led me to expect a much more coherent wrap up.

I honestly saw no point whatsoever to this film. Unlike the vast majority of Wim Wenders' movies, this movie had no warmth in it either in the story or method of creation. I didn't identify with any of the characters, nor did I so much as like any of them. I also have to wonder why talented actors such as Udo Keir, and indeed great directors like Wenders wasted their time IN Hollywood, WITH Hollywood 'dime-a-dozen' trash actors like Andie MacDowell and Bill Pullman, when their work in the past has been featured with such fantastical eloquence and inspiring style. After being spoiled shamelessly over and over by "Der Himmel Uber Berlin" and "Paris, Texas", this film is an utterly complete disappointment. 6/10 only for Wenders and Keir! Nothing else deserves anything but a puzzled look of mild pity.

In Hollywood, the wealthy producer Mike Max (Bill Pullman) enjoys and promotes violent movies. He has a troubled marriage with Paige Stockard (Andie MacDowell), who claims that he does not give much attention to her. When the stunt Cat (Traci Lind) hurts her face during a shooting, Max is afraid to be sued and visits Cat in the hospital. Then he asks his assistant Claire (Rosalind Chao) to give an audition to Cat for his next film. Out of the blue, he receives an e-mail with a classified attachment from the FBI, but he does not read. Then the stupid thugs Frank Cray (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and Lowell Lewis (John Diehl) kidnap him and say that they have been hired to kill him. Mysteriously, Mike escapes and a group of Mexican gardeners find and lodge him at home. The cinephile police detective "Doc" Dean Brock " (Loren Dean) investigates his disappearance since Max is accused of killing the two criminals and notes that the police officers seem to be hiding something. Meanwhile, the former NASA computer scientist Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) is hired to work at the Griffith Park Observatory in an experimental satellite surveillance system in Los Angeles that invades people privacy with the purpose of reducing crimes and has not been approved by the Congress yet. His chief, Brice Phelps (Daniel Benzali), sends the Salvadorean maid Mathilda (Marisol Padilla Sánchez) with her daughter to keep the place clean. When Ray sees that the cameras have filmed Max's abduction, he becomes obsessed to learn what happened to him.

"The End of Violence" is a Wim Wenders' long film with a promising beginning, messy development and awful conclusion. The music score with Ry Cooder is excellent, but the confused screenplay with many unnecessary scenes deserved an edition and improvement. Ray Bering's obsession of discovering what happened with Max recalls "Blow up". Wim Wnders' style slightly recalls David Lynch, but is only a mess. Unfortunately, the film with the idea of the end of violence (through and illegal surveillance system, or the change of opinion of Mike Max after his abduction) does not work despite the great cast. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Fim da Violência" ("The End of the Violence")

...or as I like to think of it, THE END OF VIOLENCE is the greatest scifi crime thriller that never was.

As always with Wim Wenders, the plot is fantastic. But, as always with Wim Wenders, the movie isn't about the plot, and those who expect to be carried by the plot will be disappointed. In the same way WINGS OF DESIRE had a great plot about angels but was not a fantasy; in the same way UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD had a great plot about a high tech dream machine but was not about technology; in the same way LISBON STORY had a riveting plot about a missing person but was not a mystery, here we have the same Wendersian formula which he pulls off flawlessly.

The plot, if you're curious, is about a futuristic "God machine" that can eliminate people with the push of a button. Designed ostensibly for crime prevention & surveillance (the old "to protect & serve" - where have we heard that before?), it gets out of control and takes murder & corruption to the next level of clinical perfection. Caught up in the game is Mike Max, a movie producer struggling with his own intense xenophobia and paranoia, which, like a disease, he himself spreads to society through his films.

That's all I'll say about the plot because (a) I don't want to ruin anything, and (b) like I said, the plot is secondary. What's really important, as you watch this movie, is to pay attention to the thought-provoking dialogue, the philosophical allusions and the overall metaphor of the situation. If you can tune into that stuff, then you're set for a great experience.

I'll give you just one example of the philosophy. There's a scene early on where they talk about the "observer effect" (you might recognize it as the paradox of "Schrödinger's cat" which you can look up on wikipedia). This is the fundamental theme of the film: the idea that, even by "impartially observing", we change the situation or in some cases destroy it. As one of the characters says, it's like "flipping on the light to observe the darkness." What a poetic & appropriate analogy.

This movie is choc full of that kind of stuff, and you may miss it if you're expecting car chases and gunfire. No, instead you get the ultimate anti-violence violence film, and I gotta give Wenders a standing ovation on being the first director I've seen pull it off.

A lot of movies in the past have carried a message of anti-violence; yet the films sink to the thrill of showing violence themselves and often glorifying it (the biggest example would be Norm Jewison's classic ROLLERBALL), and this becomes confusing if not outright hypocritical. But in this case, we get a chilling depiction of the epidemic of violence without showing any blood & guts to excite our savage instincts. It remains an intellectual film, not visceral. Don't get me wrong; this movie is plenty suspenseful, and on more than one occasion it'll have your heart flopping like an electrified noodle. But it's all done by way of the mind. To me, that's what makes this depiction of violence all the more effective & frightening: the way it's so clean & neat like in a video game. And without any fuss, someone's head could just go pop.

This is the best film I've seen in a while. I'm only taking off a few points because I wished it was twice as long & had more monologues, like some of the older Wenders films. But I have to say this film sticks to its objective and delivers a perfect product.

A lot going on here. Mike Max, mister big shot movie producer (Bill Pullman) is kidnapped by cut-rate thugs. and somehow manages to turn the tables, escape the kidnappers, and make a get-away. but the experience has changed him. meanwhile, we see someone is up in Griffith Observatory, watching a thousand cameras, as they watch over LA. the observer (Ray, played by Gabriel Byrne) seems to remember spotting something that might be related to the incident. lots of ethereal, extra trippy chatty conversation, as Doc (?) interviews people, searching for Mike, who is missing. he visits the wife (Andie McDowell), Mike's actors. and the whole time, Mike is hanging with the gardeners. lots of nebulous characters; no-one ever says anyone's name, so we're not really sure who anyone is. and many long pauses. it turns out there's a big-brother project to install cameras and security to help the police reduce crime, but it's so controversial that it's teetering on not being approved. sounds like Minority Report. discussions of violence in movies, violence in music lyrics. discussions on the technology to stop the violence. directed by wim wenders, who is adept at films in many categories... docs, music vids, full length. it's good, if you don't mind some confusion. mysterious mystery. keeping the viewer in the dark about so many things. it's just clever enough to get away with it. on Epix streaming channel.

I expected much of this movie, since I think Gabriel Byrne and Andie MacDowell are fine actors. But what a disappointment! It did not really bother me that it was a very slow movie (although I almost fell asleep sometimes), but for me, the story was a big question mark. I have seen complicated movies before, but I always understood them (Usual Suspects, Memento, Mission Impossible, ...). I would not recommend this movie to anybody, it is boring and it makes no sense!