The Burning Plain

"A frustrating exercise in self-indulgence..."

"It's a hard film to love, partly because of its air of deadly seriousness."

"Despite an OK-to-good cast... this remains an elaborate writing exercise with few emotional hooks."

"Humourless and sanctimonious..."

"When so many cinema releases are instantly forgettable, The Burning Plain clings to the memory..."

"Overheated, half-baked banality."

"The heavy misery and self-importance... becomes overwhelming."

"(Arriaga) has an uncanny understanding of damaged human beings. He needs to step away to let them live."

"(Arriaga's) obviousness is staggering."

"Fate breeds fatalism in a tale that Guillermo Arriaga masterfully writes and directs."

"Heavy on symbolism and melodrama but empty on ideas."

"For all the pretenses of roiling or suffocated desires, the cast appears to have been ordered to deaden all sensation (except for Basinger, who frets away in an underwritten part)."

"The characters aren't compelling enough to ask viewers to give their brains a workout to determine exactly what's going on."

"Arriaga’s directorial debut... sinks into full-on self-parody, slogging through themes of guilt and redemption with joyless, artless determination."

"The scenery (prettily captured by... Robert Elswit) is littered with heavy symbolism (fire! rain! dead birds!); the performances are merely heavy."

"The result is confusion, not catharsis."

"Throw in enough symbolism to choke an English-lit major and you have a film challenge that too often feels like a chore."