Does this flick get a thumbs up, or just the middle finger? Go beyond the break to find out…

Sometimes, when the stars align correctly, you get an all star cast that is sure to delight. Movies with the line up of Casino, Oceans 11, and even Smoking Aces don’t come around often. When I saw FIVE FINGERS, a 2006 flick featuring the solid talents of Laurence Fishburne, Ryan Phillipe, Colm Meaney, and Gina Torres, I figured I would get a decent movie. As the New York Yankees will tell you, talent doesn’t always equal championships, and good actors don’t always equal good movies.

Five Fingers follows the adventures of Martijn (Phillippe), a Dutch Pianist who is travelling to Morocco to set up a food program to help children. Shortly into his trip he and his tour guide Gavin (Meaney) are kidnapped and tortured by the terrorist Ahmet (Fishburne). Apparently Martijn is not who he says he is, the food program is not what we think it is, but you will be as bored as you think you are. When Ahmet and Martijn reach an impasse during the questioning, Ahmet uses the highly effective motivational technique of removing one of Martijn’s digits. Even though the plot is relatively simple the movie manages to do so many things wrong I barely know where to start. For the sake of my sanity I’ll concentrate on the one aspect that this type of movie needs to get right. The dialogue.

Any of us that have been in a relationship know there’s honestly a point your significant other stops being as interesting as you once thought they were. Early on you listen to every word and utterance from their mouth. A little while later and they could be screaming from the next room and you barely pay attention. The dialogue in this movie is like 50 year relationship. You just stop caring what the other person is saying. This is extremely bad in a movie that hinges upon conversation. Ahmet and Martijn discuss everything from terrorist plots to the meaning of life. Sadly I found none of it insightful, thought provoking, or at the very least humorous. Fishburne does his Islamic accent perfectly. He delivers his lines with the usual poise, grace and dignity that he often carries. The problem lies in the lines themselves. It’s like asking Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel with crayons. No matter how hard he tries, it’s not going to be pretty. Phillipe has a totally different problem. I know the guy can act. He turned in credible performance in movies like Crash, Crimson Tide, and Stop-Loss. Doing a Dutch accent may have been just a bit outside his ability. He is in and out of the accent like Lindsay Lohan is in and out of rehab. Sometimes you don’t even hear what he is saying because you are so distracted by how he is saying it. Even though both actors share many scenes together, none of them seemed memorable to me at all.

Sometimes Kobe goes 5 for 25 sometimes. Sometimes Ichiro goes 0 for 4. Sometimes OJ is not guilty. Just because these things happen now and again doesn’t mean they are the norm. I will continue to be a fan of the actors in this movie. They all have a body of work that can’t be tarnished by 1 bad movie. However I would think that none of them are too excited to reflect back on this flick. Even though the film has a twist that you see coming a mile away, once you find out the truth about Martijn it does make the movie 100 times more interesting. Sadly that is still not saying much. Me no likey!