Super slow; beyond my tolerance to watch over 20 minutes.

The uniformally excellent acting by the uniformally miscast actors elevates what could have been a very pedestrian story. Jovovitch and Kinski both again prove that they are far more than just pretty faces. It's unusual and a slow burn to be sure but it did hold my attention. Not sure I'd particularly want to sit through it again though.

Wes Bentley, Sarah Polley, Milla Jovovich, Peter Mullen Mullen is a man Daniel Dillon. He sells his wife and daughter to get ahead in business becomes immensely rich and successful in 1849. Everyone is after the claim of the century: gold. Dillon is an Irish immigrant who settles in the high mountains of California. He has a vault filled with gold and a town of his own, named Kingdom Come. Dillon owns nearly every business of consequence in the town; if someone digs for gold, rents a hotel room, opens a bank account, or commits a crime, they will have to deal with him. Twenty years later, when Dillon is an accomplished gold miner, his past comes calling. Polley plays Dillon's daughter Hope. Bentley is Donald Dalglish, a surveyor with the Central Pacific Railroad, who wants to put a train either through Kingdom Come, or somewhere in the vicinity. Dillon is anxious to ensure that the railway line is routed through "his" town, as this will bring more business. Milla plays Lucia, a vocalist and the object of Dillon's affection who operates the brothel. A new era is taking shape. The movie lacks any real heart or emotion and there's a lot of characters to keep track of. But they do manage to establish the right mood in the wintry landscape of a small part of the nation. The performances are great from Mullen, Jovovich and Polley. The film is beautifully filmed against this cold backdrop. The music can be a bit distracting at times but Michael Winterbottom is a competent director with players being as cold and searing as their home setting. Facing the past is just as upsetting as facing the future. There has to be room for change and nothing can stay the same.

there is actually no romance.. The Claim Winterbottom's poignant western venture is not only depressing but also is demotivating on terms of the gut wrenching darkness it consists. A sloppy adaptation of Hardy's novel The Mayor Of Casterbridge is still not the primary weakness of this feature. It is undeniably stable and the tone is persistent whose credit goes to the sincerity of the makers that they depict each sequence with and clearly they haven't taken the material for granted. But unfortunately, mannerism isn't everything, especially in here. There is actually no romance between the viewers and the movie and even though there are stunning rich visuals that lures the audience and demand attention from the first frame. There doesn't rely a genuine reason for you to keep rooting for this world, characters or tale. And the characters are well constructed, just like the storyline, but presumably all of that is Hardy and not Winterbottom. As far as Winterbottom's work is concerned, there is no fluidity and reasoning to tell such a dry tale. Bentley doesn't hold up to the character's range that he is allotted, he seems awfully distracted and aiming for the wrong viewers. Unfortunately, Jovovich too feels short handed on supporting him. The only savior of this on-screen-host is Mullan in his ethically challenged role that puts him in a bitter spot of regret and mourne. And he with his rage and reserved act expresses it beautifully on screen; also his track is much more compelling than others. Armed with such a potential script, Winterbottom misses an opportunity to create an emotionally driven complex western drama and instead ends up on a mellow note which actually should have been thrilling and exuberant for the viewers. The Claim is apt description of a good intention gone wrong, what it could have been is never explored and what it has to be doesn't have a concrete ground to stand on.

This one is long, slow, & boring. Not much more to say about the Claim.

I love westerns but this was so slow paced it was hard to sit through. More style than plot.

I saw it but do not recall it well.

Sencilla y emotiva. De lo mejor de Winterbottom. Muy bonito scire de Nyman.

Inventive, rarely conventional or stereotypical, realistic with style, hard, gripping but unfolds slowly, great characters, fantastic cinematography, can't find any negative words for this film.

It's strange what behind-the-scenes drama and low box office can do to a film's reputation. Hopefully another thirty years will rectify that. The weirdest thing about this movie is that almost all of the roles are badly miscast, especially Jovovich and Bentley, and yet the acting is uniformly excellent. Everyone looks and speaks wrong for the setting and period, and yet here I am praising their performances. Makes no sense. Winterbottom's dedication to verisimilitude is absurd and breathtaking.

Clearly influenced by "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", this film is sadly lacking the emotional underpinnings that were present in Altman's classic. It's always nice to see Milla Jovovitch do something besides subpar horror/sci-fi flicks and the film is elegantly filmed by director Michael Winterbottom, who does a nice job of creating sense of place with a rich atmosphere in the snowy frontier town. Still, it's the lack of emotional depth that holds the film back. Loosely based on Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge."

Winterbottom and Boyce have turned Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge into a morality tale about the dangerous nature of the lust for gold weighed against the needs of love, and a man who finds that greed leaves one with only loneliness and ashes. Beautifully filmed in the grandeur of winter in the Sierra Nevadas with an excellent cast and memorable performances, it may not be the book you remember from English class, but it's well worth seeing.

As versatile as ever, Winterbottom's western is one of his most underappreciated films. Milla Jovovich singing the fado? Yes, please.

<i>The Claim</i> gets off to a terrible start. It begins with a group of people coming into the small town of Kingdom Come, but before we have even been introduced to them, they're already communicating like they know one another. Obviously some of them do, but we seem to be missing all of the in-jokes and relations. Some have just known each other, but they're talking like they've know, one another for years. It doesn't help that the dialogue is hard to hear and there are so many people to follow around that we're instantly disoriented. Regardless, this is how <i>The Claim</i> opens up. Over the course of the film, we'll get to know some of the characters, although none of them well enough. We find out that the town is more or less run by a man named Mr. Dillon (Peter Mullan). He owns the stores, he decides who can come and go, and he even sets the rules (in the first scene, the characters are told that no firearms are allowed in-town because Mr. Dillon says so). This is one powerful man, so it only makes sense that he'll play a pivotal role later on. Coming into the town are a few people, some of whom matter, while others don't. Firmly on the "matter" side is Donald Daglish (Wes Bentley), a surveyor for the Central Pacific Railroad who desires to place tracks down either going through Kingdom Come, or close to it. Mr. Dillon wants it in town, obviously for business reasons. Also on the "matter" side are the terminally ill Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and her daughter Hope (Sarah Polley). Their reason for being in-town is something I'll leave for you to discover. What transpires over the rest of the film are a progression of these characters as we discover things that they already know. Like with the opening scene, they all seem to be aware of small (or sometimes rather large) details that are only slowly revealed to us. Presenting us with the information this way is a risky move on the part of director Michael Winterbottom. Whether or not it pays off will depend on who you are, and if you can deal with a much slower pace as a result. For me, this resulted in a film that was, at times, too slow. Character often just sat around, doing very little, and it made for a boring watch. Once things got going, we started learning about them, and "shocking" reveals were made, I started to have a good time. But in between these moments are long, drawn-out periods of almost nothingness. Well-photographed nothingness (seriously, cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchler deserves a ton of credit here), but nothingness nonetheless. Of course, doing nothing is just what the characters would have to do during both the time period and the season. <i>The Claim</i> is set during the gold rush, as well as during the Winter. When it's snowing and it's too cold outside to work, what are you going to do? Stay at the saloon or the brothel, sleep a great deal, sit around and drink while chatting with friends or strangers -- but that's about it. This comes across clearly in the film, but filming this doesn't necessarily make for an enjoyable watch. The style of the film, where you're mostly just dropping into the lives of these people -- eavesdropping on their conversations, if you will -- instead of watching a traditional film, works both in its favor and against it. It helps because it makes the film unique. It helps with immersion because you feel like you're really in this town. We don't think we're on a movie set, and we don't instantly think these people are actors. It looks authentic, and that means something in a period piece. Also helping to set the scene are the actors. You can dress terrible actors in accurate costumes, place them in front of realistic sets, and they'll ruin the immersion and believability because they're, well, bad actors. Luckily, this film has good actors who -- even though some of them can't keep a consistent accent -- help make us feel like we're back in the mid-1800s. They don't need a lot of range here, though, as there are few highly emotional scenes, but for what they were given, they all did fine. However, choosing to leave in mundane and largely unimportant scenes, while making it seem more genuine, hurts the pacing and can potentially bore an audience. Sure, you're immersed, but how much does that really mean if you feel like you want to leave the town you're in? I wanted that train to be built so I could get the first ticket out of this place and go somewhere more interesting. This filming/editing style is a balancing act that doesn't quite pay off. It does mean that the film is unpredictable. You're not going to figure out who will do what after watching the first 30 or so minutes, which is almost a rarity. Some things you might be able to figure out, but many of the reveals felt fresh in my mind. That does come with the territory when we're sometimes unsure of which character we're currently watching and why they're important, but when the revelations occur and they surprise you, you are given a good feeling. <i>The Claim</i> is a film that I feel really unsure about after watching it. One one hand, it tried something unique by not playing out like your generic film. Instead, we get to eavesdrop on some characters, learning about them really slowly, and not really giving them a plot. On the other hand, this style means that there's a lot of downtime and I was frequently bored. I suppose I have to use the "Is It Fun?" test to determine whether I had a good time. The answer to that is: "Intermittently, but on the whole, no." There you go.

A lot of the lines seemed a bit forced and the characters were quite shallow. Still a very watchable movie with a decent story line.

'The Claim' is the story of America itself, an America that was built on greed, on the quest for new lands, new conquers and prosperity. Peter Mullan gives us an excellent performance, as well as Sarah Polley as the elegant young daughter and Milla Jovovich. Nastasia Kinsky has a rather insignificant role and Wes Bentley is disappointing. Overall, a very good film, a piece of art by Winterbottom and a story that you won't forget for a while.

Interesting premise, doesn't quite live up to the hope I had after seeing the impressive cast list but I certainly didn't feel cheated after viewing it. If you enjoy Old West frontier movies, like I do, then you will probably enjoy it, but if slow-moving period character pieces drive you nuts then you should probably avoid this effort.

Wes Bentley and Thomas Hardy storytelling = love

Just one of those special period piece movies you don't here much about. The Claim is a dramatically unique western done with great style. In the great Gold Rush days of the mid 19th Century, an Irish immigrant, Dillion, sells his wife and daughter to a man for his gold claim, and since then had become very prosperous, even raising a small town. 3 people come to the town who'll break Dillion. One is a man named Dalglish who is sent to build a railroad near his town. The other two are his dying wife and his daughter who does not know Dillion is her real father. The Claim is a very nice touch on the western genre. It's a great character drama, romantic, and very depressing. It's a good combination. We see Dillion as a powerful man with a vast fortune, but we have sympathy for him because he doesn't have what he really wants in life. Though he's rich, money can't buy him everyting. Peter Mullan does a wonderful performance, and so does Wes Bentley when things begin to heat up. The lovely Milla Jovovich plays an interesting but a little bit sad character; Dillion's Portuguese lover, Lucia, who owns the town brothel. She's another character whos wealth cannot quite get everything she wants. The Claim is a tad bit on the melodramatic side, but it is balanced wonderfully by the directing. The style of the movie is great. It's cinematography is very cold and dark and 100% fantastic. The outdoor scenes don't have a lot of colour to them, and that really brings out the isolation and empty feel of the movie. But the inside of the pioneer houses are full of detail, but with a different, warmer colour that still doesn't make the movie any more warm or happy. The old timy costumes, dresses and sets look fantastic, fully of little details of how things were back then. Nothing fancy at all or romanticised, just the bare minimum to get a sence of how desperate such times were. And the last thing that brings this movie together is the extremely wonderful music score by Michael Nyman that truely fits the movie and brings so much emotion to the movie, right up the great climax. It may be a little slow with a lot of drama, and it doesn't have a big named cast or big name director, but The Claim is a unique period piece movie that an interesting and well paced western that can hit the right spot when you're in the mood. Its different and stylistic take on the old west and downer of a story makes The Claim a satisfying film if you want to watch something different.

Excellent movie  but then again I am a sucker for a Thomas Hardy adaptation ;-)