Movie Review (2): Premonition

By Colin MacIntyre Mar 16, 2007, 14:02 GMT

About a woman (Bullock) whose husband (McMahon) reappears the day after his death. ...more

Does the same person who selects Jim Carrey’s movies pick films for Sandra Bullock?

If so, they should be consigned to watch ‘The Number 23’ and ‘Premonition’ for all eternity.

Bullock is a capable actress. Look at ‘Crash’ and her solid turn as Harper Lee in ‘Infamous.’She can carry a solid commercial hit (‘Miss Congeniality’) and, in the right vehicle, pull in box office well over $100 million.

Surely by now she has the clout to select the best script and the best backup team available.

So then how does one explain the limp psychological thriller ‘Premonition’?

Perhaps Bullock read the script and felt it demanded a real emotional reach and, because she is on camera for just about every frame of its 1:40, a physical challenge as well.

The first half hour of the film gives you an idea of what it might have been but as time wears (and wears) on, your heart goes out to the actress. She is still up there on the screen giving her best, pulling all the emotional levers and pressing all the buttons, long after the movie has
receded, leaving her stranded.

Bullock is Linda Hanson, who lives the good suburban life with Jim (Julian McMahon of TV’s Nip-Tuck) her handsome, loving husband and her two lovable moppets.

On one cloudless day, she sends her kids off to school and her husband Jim to work and he dies in a car accident out there on the highway somewhere.

Linda copes as best she can but her world has fallen apart.

But, for those of you who have missed the unavoidable trailer, the next morning Jim is there beside her in the bed. Linda is a very self-possessed young lady but, slowly, she starts to come apart. Particularly since the next morning, she awakes to find that preparations are well underway for Jim’s funeral.

To make it worse, people keep referring to conversations and events she can’t remember.

She finds lithium pills from a prescription she doesn’t remember getting from a doctor she never met.

And Jim has developed the unnerving habit of appearing at the breakfast table every second day.

Gradually, as the days and nights pass, Linda discovers that she is no longer living life in a linear fashion. Her days are all scrambled but if she can get some fix on what’s happening, perhaps she can save Jim’s life.

But, alas, our Linda seems to accept what fate is dealing her with a kind of dumb passivity. She’s a victim and it’s tough to relate to someone who doesn’t rail against the forces arrayed against her.

For the first half hour much of this works as Ms. Bullock ratchets up the intensity, but neither she nor German director Mennan Yapo can keep us interested and the film just wanders away.

As the film plods onward, we become aware that Premonition is riddled with inconsistencies and incoherence.  It is unable to make up its mind what its trying to be – a love story, a surreal mind game, a tale of the supernatural or the story of a woman going mad.

Finally, the film is unable to answer the questions it raises. At one point, a priest, who seems to keep a book of historical references to the phenomenon, with marked pages for just such emergencies, tells her that since she has lost her faith, strange things are happening to her. “Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum," he tells her earnestly.

But, up until that moment, the film has given us no clue just when and how she has fallen away.

Is Mel Gibson out there somewhere?

The end of the film seems to have a major message for all of us. Don’t talk to your wife on a cell phone when you are stranded in the middle of a busy highway.

Otherwise, there’s not much else you can take away from this disappointing waste of a very talented actress.