How is it that Christian Bale always manages to get himself the parts where he just wanders around the place getting laid? He's a successful writer who feels his hollow life needs a bit of a lift. When his brother takes his own life (perhaps he'd read the script?), and with his other one in a bit of a mess of his own making, "Rick" concludes that he needs to find something more substantial in his life than drifting along finding casual sex when/where he can. What now ensues, loosely based on a Tarot suite, takes us on a tour of Los Angeles and Las Vegas as his plays out his peccadilloes with a selection of women - including Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman. Will he find happiness? Contentment even? Who cares? I'm afraid I didn't. To be fair, Terrence Malick has spent some time on the aesthetic here - the film looks good, but if you are going to centre a film on a character like "Rick", then you have to hope that he engages with those watching. He didn't and I didn't. The story just plodded along going nowhere fast, introducing us to characters with next to no depth or charisma and though I'm usually a fan of sparing dialogue, the absence of anything meaningful really did detract from what was clearly an underlying philosophy tied into an ancient Eastern myth and meant to illustrate the risks of never settling for what you have - even if you know what you're looking for. Brian Dennehy adds very little as his father and I felt the whole thing looked like it was more of a rehearsal, or an home video, than a finessed product. I didn't hate it, it has it's moments, but I wouldn't watch it again, nor could I really recommend it either.
