Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

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

lloyd150 I picked this up for a fiver in HMV after browsing the DVD section. I was drawn by the box and thought it was a horror. I did not read all about its's awards etc and thought it was an out and out horror.It is not - it is a slow burning thriller.As the film went on I started to emphasise with the main character. What would I do in his shoes - was it right to keep your head down and say and do nothing.I thought all the characters were played well although I thought the captain played by Peter Millen, from my neighbouring town Peterhead, could have been a little more menacing and not so much brooding - it looked though he was in physical pain rather than emotional. Special mention to Gary Lewis and Samuli Edelmann. Good character actors with something simmering below the surface.Well worth a look.

bahuna Even though I really enjoyed "Cargo", I would like to share a goof I just discovered: After Chris is hit over the head, a crew member examines and cleans the wounds on his forehead. No blood is left on his brow. In the next scene, however, which shows Chris sitting on his berth, the old blood stain has miraculously made its way back to right below Chris' hairline. Other than that, the plot seems perfectly consistent. The setting on an old rotting freighter keeping a dark secret in its bowels surely contributes to the film's overall spooky atmosphere. All the acting is credible, and character development is subtle and thoughtful, although the portrayal of crazy old Herman seems a little cliché-ridden and overdone. Even if it may not quite play in the league of Hitchcock and the likes, "Cargo" is miles above cheap, brainless and inconclusive torture flicks in the fashion of "Hostel."

jebwandertaus An interesting collaborative production out of Spain, staring a leading German actor, and shot in English, "Cargo" starts, continues, and finishes with a permeating sense of dread and discomfort. Imagine the scene in "Das Boot" in which the ruddy engineer loses it, and extend that to a full-length film (adding some mysterious sounds and disappearances of characters) and you get the general feeling. For all its beautiful, gritty imagery, the story leaves some significant questions unanswered. That's not necessarily bad in a film. For example, a question like "Does the captain's ominous drawing of the beautiful parrot turned demon actually mean something literal, or metaphoric?" leaves you with something to think about and discuss. But, other questions (Why and how are the sailors disappearing? Are they being killed or jumping ship from guilt? How exactly does the boy drown when the other thrown-over passenger seems to come out just fine?) leave you wondering if the script was badly cut, the film badly edited, or were bad direction or budgetary restrictions to blame. While glad to have seen it, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to a friend, unless they are a thriller or mystery fanatic.

wmjaho I think the reason the Sundance organizers like dark depressing movies is that no one else does. You can make a rotten comedy and it can still do $30 million at the box office. But if you're going to go the slow downer route, you'd better have A Beautiful Mind, or something like it, or you're destined for straight to DVD. And if Sundance is intending to encourage an outlet for all forms of expression, I suppose that's a worthy objective. Just don't plan on enjoying some of the movies.Cargo is about a ship leaving Africa for Europe and a young man (Daniel Bruhl) who stows away. It is clear from the get-go that this is a mysterious voyage, with exotic birds and rough-looking sailors with secrets and mysterious searches and who knows what's going on. I certainly didn't. It all gets cleared up in the end, which proves to be anticlimactic. In fact, by the end of the movie I hardly cared.Listening to the Q&A at Sundance I began to understand why. This was a script that took a meandering course to completion, often pausing at many forks in the road to production. Fantasy or reality? Nice guy or not? Happy ending or sad? Somehow, these decisions were made and as a result Cargo feels less like a director's vision than it does a project by committee.I didn't really know or care about any of the characters. And with all the eeriness of the set-up, I was expecting something more.