O (Othello) (2001)

The thing that caught my attention most about "O" before I even watched it, was the quote on the box, "THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL MOVIE OF THE YEAR" (it's in all caps on the box too, wasn't just a stylistic choice on my part). The film is is one of manipulation passion and betrayal, but honestly i don't want to even risk giving too much away. The title "O",other than being almost as frustrating a title as IT, is short for Othello, meaning this is a retelling of a classic piece of Literature, but don't worry, I'm not here to Champion the works of the Bard, in fact this is my first exposure to the Othello, so this won't be a review of this as an adaptation, I will look at O as a film and a film only

Colour 5/10: Honestly, i have very little to say in terms of Colour, I didn't notice any over or under exposed shots or scenes, but the absence of bad uses of colour doesn't mean its particularly good either, and i certainly didn't notice any deeper meaning so, yeah a five

Character 9/10: O is clearly at it's strongest when it explores the feelings or motivations of the characters, which is most of the time luckily. Strangely enough life seems to reflect art as Mekhi Phifer, who plays Odin, is clearly the MVP of the movie, while Josh Hartnett, who plays Hugo, seemed to be living in the shadow of Mekhi's performance. The film has a Incredible and Poetic character arc in Odin, and watching his story feels like a privilege, and towards the end of the film my jaw hung open, and while the performance wasn't for me the antagonist (who in all honesty was the movies true protagonist) was great to watch, even if his motivations can seem very petty. But some characters such as Desi seemed underdeveloped for such an important role and characters such as Roger seemed to have a bit of a weak motive , so over all a very respectable score of nine

Camera 6/10: honestly camera is just like colour, but there was a couple memorable pieces of cinematography, but then again there was also a freeze frame that made me think the film was over five minutes before the credits started. DESPITE that though it still was slightly above average

Sound 3/10: the sound design was NOT a problem with the movie, but the soundtrack really let it down, most songs are Hip Hop or Rap, none of the songs were bad, but they just didn't fit in with the upper class prep school setting, and the weird choice took me out of the movie a handful of times

Setting 8/10: despite not feeling too important at times the upper class prep school does seem to juxtapose Odin with his class mates, and school is the perfect place for a story of betrayal

Story 9/10: Even if it wasn't said on the box it would have been obvious to me that this was the retelling of a classic, as the story is (just like the characters) amazingly done, even if my first thought after the film was that it was 4 minutes too long and that the scenes of a sexual nature were played mainly for shock value, it is already clear to me that the lasting impression from this film will be how amazing the climax was.

O was not Controversial in anyway in my opinion , and it wasn't very impressive on a technical level, but it was seemingly impossibly well written, so the overall score is 7 out of 10 or 3.5 stars out of five, but since it can only be a whole star, i have no problems giving O 4 stars out of 5