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Before and After

1996

Barbet Schroeder

Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson, Edward Furlong, Alfred Molina ...

5.7

3,544

Mystery. Drama The idyllic life of Carolyn and Ben Ryan (Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson) is shattered in an instant when the girlfriend of their teenage son, Jacob (Edward Furlong), is found brutally murdered. Jacob was the last person to see her alive, and he quickly becomes the prime suspect in the case. Worse yet, Jacob has disappeared, rendering himself a fugitive and leaving his shocked parents to try to piece together the mysterious puzzle amidst ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Ken Tucker Entertainment Weekly	"[It] is as cold as its chilly scenes of winter (...) Brown’s characters weren’t very likable either, but her prose carried the story; in a film, we need people we can care about, or at least root for."	NEG
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"When a book you buy into as much as Rosellen’s Brown’s 'Before and After' becomes a movie you don’t believe for a minute, you have to figure the problem is tone (...) It plays like a trashy TV movie with an absurdly overqualified cast."	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"A long, slow slog through a story about a family crisis (...) Alfred Molina can be a wonderful actor (...), but he is not well used here (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Godfrey Cheshire Variety	"It's so afraid of violating basic pieties that it ends up saying nothing."	NEG
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"Schroeder's detached directorial style doesn't suit the film's strained home and hearth scenes."	NEG
United Kingdom	Time Out	"Schroeder has a way of making decent, intelligent, rather boring films (...), but this is simply more mediocre than most: a fraught family drama which never really hits home."	NEG

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