Ash Wednesday (2002)

Ash Wednesday so titled because the action takes place on that day of repentance in the Catholic faith and into Lent. Leading character Edward Burns who directed as well keeps the ash cross on his forehead until almost the end of the film. Almost as if he was looking for protection. He and brother Elijah Wood sure needed it.They play the Sullivan brothers at one time sons of a prominent Irish mobster. Seems as though the Wood killed a pair of Italian hoodlums and their relations are looking for payback.Burns and local priest James Handy have created a fiction that Wood is dead and spirited him out of town where he's lived in Texas for 3 years. Now Wood is back to get his wife Rosario Dawson who has thought her husband was dead, part of the plan to make the death story believable.Burns is well out of the rackets, but in his effort to protect his brother he's being dragged back in. Wood doesn't make it easy for him either.Ash Wednesday is a nice if cheaply made film about family loyalty and sacrifice in a working class Irish American family. Note that this is set in the early 80s when Hell's Kitchen still had some working class blocks. It's pretty yuppified now, so Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood stands in. This was the same setting for the Sean Connery/Dustin Hoffman/Matthew Broderick film Family Business which was done in the late 80s and also about family as well.The characters are well drawn with no stereotyping at all. James Handy is not a typical priest by any means. No comparison to him and Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley in another film which also was set in Hell's Kitchen when it really was Irish working class.Burns and Wood have good chemistry as brothers. Ash Wednesday has some fine characterizations done by some talented players.

OK, it wasn't the best drama I've ever seen. But, it wasn't complete torture. I won't waste time discussing the plot, as it was relatively easy to follow. Edward Burns directed, wrote, and starred in this movie. What a chore. I give him points for his acting and for his incredible ability to multi-task, but he loses points for the repetition of the story. One user said that Burns's character spent most of the movie walking around NYC talking to people, and they were quite right. The movie took nearly 30 minutes to actually become "clear", and even then it was still vague.Elijah Wood is my favorite actor, and he is a very talented one. However, he seems quite out of place here. Forgive me, Elijah. I mean no disrespect to him, but maybe Burns should have looked for someone slightly older. I can see why he wanted Wood, as Wood has an inner innocence about him, but he seemed as if his character were from a totally different family. Not his fault, I'm sure. And for those of you who keep saying that Wood plays the same character roles in all of his movies, I have one movie for you: Sin City. I rest my case. Perhaps Burns's should have cast a 25-year-old instead of a 20-year-old. (Yes, Wood was 20 when this movie was shot, not 17, as he appears.) The ending was a total letdown. It was a very fatalistic approach, but it made the entire movie pointless! How could you go for 2 hours trying to establish that Burns's character has to save Wood's, and then just--bang!--take out your main character? It just doesn't work. I remember sitting there and going, "What? That's it?!" A good idea, but not for an ending to a movie like this.I would like to see better movies from Burns in the future, as he is not a bad writer/actor/director, but maybe not another movie like this. He should stop with Mob movies. And the other movies I have starring Elijah Wood are much better ones (except Day Zero). My apologies.6/10, for some choice moments. If you look, you may be able to pick them out.

What do you get when you combine inane dialogue, a lackluster plot, half-developed characters, and a terrible musical score? Ash Wednesday. The film had potential to be at least mediocre, but it just didn't work. The film was based around a weak, predictable plot that was filled with glaring plot-holes, and the characters and relationships were too underdeveloped to even make the film a character-driven story. Characters wander in and out of the plot without ever gathering much sympathy or hatred from audiences, and eventually it becomes difficult to care what happens to any of them. Even their dialogue is pitiful: swearing is fine in movies, but this film goes beyond overkill with its ridiculous amount of profanity, even to the point where it becomes distracting. Rather than encouraging viewers to listen for meaning in the characters' words, this film's dialogue quickly becomes a game of seeing just how many variations of the "F word" can be jammed into a single sentence. Just in case the film itself isn't horrible enough, the musical score is also horrendous. It has some sort of bizarre attempt at a musical motive, but it is annoyingly repetitive and changes little from scene to scene. When the film finally limps into its unsatisfying conclusion, those few who managed to sit all the way through it will be wishing that they hadn't wasted 98 minutes of their lives suffering through this film.

After posting a review on this movie and then reading other postings, I finally figured out why the movie ended the way it did.In another posting, the reviewer was pointing out how dumb it was to put on a P-coat and cap of someone that every hit man would have their eyes open for. That's just asking to be killed. I believe Ed Burns' character figures that is the best way to end a lot of things - people looking for his brother, his own 'fall off the wagon' of going straight, and the affair with his brother's wife that he knew was a low thing to do, given the fact that she didn't know her husband was still alive. And being Catholic, to commit suicide is a mortal sin - one that prevents entry into heaven. Just let someone else kill him and his soul won't be eternally damned.Of course, this just opens things up for the younger brother to want to come back to seek revenge, and this movie fully demonstrates the futility of revenge upon revenge. I generally don't like to give too much details about movies so that other viewers can enjoy it and form their own opinions. However, the ending seems a little deeper (if somewhat wasteful) with my new found understanding, than just another killing in the vicious circle of revenge.