I think I put Enduring Love on my netflix queue on the strength of my current fascination with Daniel Craig (a fascination that mostly hasn't let me down, movie-wise). But this movie was a mess. I get the feeling from E, who's read the book, that the book kind of has a point (and she sorta said what it was), but I didn't really get much out of the movie. The problem for me was that this is one of those stories where you just want to grab one or more characters by the lapels and yell "HAY STOP ACTING LIKE AN IDIOT" -- basically things are swept along on crazy situations that would never arise if one or two people would just stop and think, or calmly explain things to each other. Hey, you have a nutjob stalker! Why not call the police and/or explain this to your girlfriend?! Rhys Ifans does a good (very) creepy stalker, but he was so creepy and repulsive, it's unbelievable than Daniel Craig wouldn't just run far far away.

Apparently the point of the thing is supposed to be that Craig has these theories about how love is meaningless, isn't real, etc. and is confronted with obsessive love as well as normal romantic and family love (his girlfriend and friends) and must come to understand that, evolution or not, love is real. The thing is, if we're supposed to accept Craig as some kind of smarty philosophy guy, it's ridiculous that he would think that the biological basis of love precludes the intensity of its feeling; his whole theory is the kind of thing college kids come up with at 2am while smoking weed. It doesn't stand up to the light of day or adulthood, and it seems fairly silly that the manifestly adult Daniel Craig has to learn some lesson at the hands of crazy Rhys Ifans. Alternately boring, annoying, painful to watch, and briefly moving, this is not a movie I could possibly recommend. Some good actors doing good jobs but in the service of a mess.