Fragments (2008)

Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Forrest Whitaker, Dakota Fanning, & Josh Hutcherson

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 stars

Most films that are split into separate parts and tell a story in pieces, come together at the end. All the characters converge, culminating in a terrific ending, but Fragments was different, in that all the characters were together in the opening sequence, and then the film splits into individual stories. The story is centered around a group of people in a diner, when a shooter comes in an opens fire. Following the shooting, we see how each person reacts and how their lives are changed by what happened. It sounds like a very good story and that's exactly why I rented it, however the reverse order of the film makes it somewhat anti-climatic. All the interesting stuff happens in the beginning of the film and what follows, just gets slower, stranger, and somewhat less interesting. The film really doesn't have a single person that you can put the label of star on, but as far as performances go, Forrest Whitaker easily gives the strongest one. Whitaker does almost exclusively independent films and is always overlooked because of it, but this man can honestly play any role and in my eyes is among the elite in Hollywood. On the reverse side, Dakota Fanning's character almost completely destroys this film. After what happened, this little girl finds God and starts preaching to the masses. I'm all for anything that gives people hope and makes their lives better, but when anyone, even a character in a movie, starts preaching to anyone who will listen, it gets very old, very quickly. Fragments is not a bad film, just an unusual one. With the story they had, following the traditional format would have been impossible, but that doesn't mean that this was the way to go. What started out as a terrific film, quickly turned into something that was nearly unwatchable.