A flat reincarnation of life-after-death films you've seen before.
While I liked the three main characters in Clint Eastwood’s HEREAFTER, I never became attached enough to them or their stories to keep from lapsing into spells of boredom. Most of the film splits into three separate stories, which means each character disappears from the screen for ten to twenty minutes at a stretch. Perhaps if we got to see the three protagonists more consistently, it would have been easier to connect with them.
Matt Damon is a fine actor and it wouldn’t surprise me if he one day walks away with a well-deserved acting Oscar. That said, he's so good-looking -- even with extra pounds and a dash of gray in this role -- it was hard for me to accept him as a lonely, isolated soul. (No matter how big his character’s burden.) Also, he exhibits a form of ESP, a trait we’ve seen too many times now on the screen. The scenes in which Damon’s George communicates with the deceased are just cheesy. I also got the impression I was supposed to be bowled over with emotion by his final spiritual reading in the film -- instead it came across as silly.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What unites the central character in each of the three tales -- George, Marcus and Marie -- is their interest in heaven, or the hereafter. Damon plays George Lonegan, a San Francisco native who reluctantly communicates with the departed by holding the hands of their loved ones. Marie (Cécile De France), who lives in Paris, is forever changed by a near-death experience while vacationing abroad. And London schoolboy Marcus (played by both Frankie and George McLaren)mourns the recent loss of his twin brother, killed in a car accident. (Tragedy follows so closely upon tragedy at the beginning of the film that it's difficult to shake one's paranoia that yet more doom is in store for these folks.) Marie and Marcus’s experiences force them to delve into research on life after death. Both their quests ultimately lead them to George, who is bitter, frustrated and lonely over his "cursed" ability to transcend the physical world.
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