Don't know how real to life it was, but as a movie it failed horribly. The thing I noticed most was the lack of cohesion. Characters disappeared for long lengths of time (sometimes an hour or longer), and Beyonce's character didn't even come in until an hour and 16 minutes into the movie. The acting and singing were solid, but the rest came up short. Nothing went together cohesively and made for a good movie. It was all too... random. I didn't know much about what I was going to see or the events depicted in the movie, but overall I felt it would have worked much better as a TV miniseries or something. There was just too much information to display all at once and too many characters and things going on at once. It was often difficult to follow the time frame and to distinguish between people. It had some great moments (a scene of explicit police brutality, Beyonce singing for the first time, and a few others including a scene where Adrien Brody is having sex, hears a phone ring, looks at it, and keeps thrusting away), but for the most part it was... terrible. Like I said, great performances does not a great movie make... it was in desperate need of cohesion. This is speaking as someone who knew nothing about most of the people in this movie.
Review of Cadillac Records
