★½ The Bridge of San Luis Rey

[Gino: 1.5]

Gino says: 'This 2004 movie is quite lavish, being set in colonial Peru during Inquisition times. It has a cast that includes Robert De Niro, Kathy Bates, Harvey Keitel, F. Murry Abraham, Gabriel Byrne, etc. So how bad can it be? Well, at least two of those people (De Niro and Keitel) are totally distracting when they are doing accents (actually, I am not even sure they were, but either way -- distracting). This is set up like a murder mystery kinda film: there is a trial going on, and in flashback the story of a bunch of characters are told, leading up to an incident where many of them die in a bridge collapse. But somehow screen/story time is spent too evenly among the characters, none of whose stories is super interesting, and after a while I just got totally lost about what this film was "about". '