Swimming Upstream (2004)

That was an excellent one.

Good movie but grossly overrated

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Swimming Upsteam was a wonderful movie mainly about two brothers, named Tony and John, and their alcoholic father Hereld. The boys as kids were best friends very close in their relationship. Tony (the main character) as a kid wasn't good in any sports and never had a real connection and good relationship with his father, because his father favored his kids gifted in sports, such as Johns and Tony's older brother Herald JR (he was gifted in football and boxing). One day their father came with them to their normal hang out place, the pool. there Herald found John and Tony's meant to be sport, swimming. They started training the next day at 6 in the morning, for a long time that is what they did day after day. Then they had their first meet. Johns event was first, before Tony's. both of them won first in their event, yet Johns picture went on the wall not Tonys. For years and years training and winning is what happened. After years the training, competition and their trainer a.k.a their dad set these two brothers apart in rivalry and almost hatred.As a swimmer, I found this movie very entertaining and cannot understand how a normal person can find this movie bad and not entertaining. If you find this movie boring I would suggest either research on the characters (because this is based on a true story), watching the movie again and listen to the details and the cool Australian accent or start the sport of swimming. I highly recommend this movie even if your not interested in sports or swimming, because overall it is a good movie.

If released a good few years ago this movie would probably be up for Golden Globes and Oscars - at least for its cast and writer. But the basic theme and plotting, even if it is based on real lives, is so familiar that lacklustre reviews mean its presence has barely been detected as a tiny blip on the radar of the average movie goer. I nearly missed this one, and clearly most have.Which is a shame.Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis give superb performances and have the basic material that helps them show off their talents, while newcomers (at least to the movies) Jesse Spencer and Tony Draxl provide the eye candy that should, in theory, put plenty of teenage girl bums on seats. That they, unlike say Orlando Bloom, can also act and act pretty well, is an added bonus.The problem is we've seen it all before and it all comes over as a bit of a copy of better movies we've seen. Direction is rather pedestrian and where it tries to break out of the mould it fails (in my view). Part of the problem is the "Swimming" of the title - this isn't a movie about swimming, it's a movie about the destruction of a family and getting away from that destruction. But the swimming scenes are key to that story and here the director, in recognising that, and the problems in showing such scenes to the average viewer, takes us out of the period drama and suddenly immerses us in "24"-style split screen mode and thumping music to artificially generate excitement. This may be considered a brave, even innovative move by some, but resorting to such artificiality by using the obvious tempo of a modern music beat to get the heart pumping and throwing multiple images at the eye is usually a sign that the truth at the core just isn't really working - at least for me. Such effects cheapen the film somewhat and the effect is only exacerbaged by the movie's biggest mistake - the clichéd use of an overused classical piece of music (don't know the name - I keep wanting to say 'Barber's Adagio for Strings' as was used in 'Platoon' but I don't think it's that!) suddenly used at the crucial final scene between the central character and his father. Oh dear! Lose three points for originality and taking the 'make it cloying, and sentimental by poking the audience with a stick' route! A real shame because this is a VERY GOOD movie, well worth 90 minutes of anybody's time just for Rush's performance alone, it's just not a GREAT one.The final, and sadly captionless, image of the two brothers 'good luck' hand shake frozen freeze-frame over the 'where are they now' messages at the end of the movie provide the saddest coda of all (albeit one touched on more by the deleted scenes on the DVD and the comment made at a screening by Fingleton that he and his brother have not spoken since) stays with you after the movie is over.Recommended and well worth a viewing/purchase on DVD, but in some ways a missed opportunity at greatness.

I grew up in Sydney during the 1950's and although my childhood was good it wasn't the "good old days" people like to reminisce about.This film captures the Australia of the 1950's perfectly.An insular nation still coming to grips with who it was and where it was going.As a child I saw men traumatised by the war or the depression; unable to express their feelings and as trapped in their roles as were the women.Rush and Davies were superb as were the actors who played the children.What a pity Tony had to escape to the USA. Has anything really changed?A great little Australian Movie

Just saw this film on its USA premiere at the Stony Brook Film Festival opening night. A packed house and an excellent Q+A session made this moving film a perfect choice to start the festival.As previously stated, the casting was perfect with the distressed family members being portrayed in believable and engrossing ways. Both Rush and Davis deliver wonderful portrayals. According to the author, who was on hand for the opening, Geoffrey Rush did an eerily accurate job in his role as Tony Fingleton's father. All in all, an excellent film that should be distributed more widely than it currently is.