TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Art Vandelay I had no idea they'd made a movie of The Swimmer. But I'll watch anything with Burt Lancaster in it. My goodness, Lancaster is mid-50s and he's in great shape. He took swimming lessons for this role but he looks like a complete natural. Although over-baked in some regards - the gushy music, the ending, the zooms, the montages - this still drew me in. Since nobody else has mentioned her I have to give props to Janice Rule's performance as Shirley. That was the most affecting scene to me. She was dynamite.

GUENOT PHILIPPE This is for me one of the best pictures ever made on the fall of the American dream, in a sort of Scott Fitzgerald or Norman Mailer manner. I won't add much more to the wonderful comments already made about this unique movie in cinema history. Only one thing, I will point out. One important sequence, near the motorway, when Lancaster character tries to cross it. I remembered David Miller's masterpiece - LONELY ARE THE BRAVE - the final scene, when Kirk Douglas, the rebel cowboy fighting againt the modern world, is suddenly hit and killed by a truck loaded with toilets seats!!! This sequence for me was so unforgettable. THE SWIMMER is also a very eerie tale, where no one ever exactly knows where the lead comes from, what his life was before, even if he really exists...Is he a dream, or a nightmare? This feature also speaks of the superficiality of the rich people and their emptiness of their lives, speaking, endlessly of pure domestic problems - such a the swimming pool vacum cleaner issues - gossips around the swimming pools where nearly NONE of them gets into - except of course the public swimming pool sequence, where Lancaster seems to suffocate. In this movie this so poignant character slowly encounters ostracism fromt the people he meets. In the final scene, water - rain - is not in the pool but OUTSIDE the pool, in the same time as Lancaster character suddenly seems to collapse, suddenly becomes so fragile. The total contrary of the beginning where he is so athletic and tanned. It is a totally metaphoric film made in the turn of the Hollywood history, a couple of years before EASY RIDER, WILD BUNCH, THE GRADUATE. Lancaster legend of the old Hollywood is here on the spot. Lancaster is for me the perfect brave, the true brave. The brave facing his own loneliness. Terrific.

Schuriken Bravo Mr. Lancaster this is a real good one. We get to see all the aspects of your character and all your talent all in one movie. Happy, sad, in love, out of love, sane, insane, sunny, rainy, modest, out of place, in place, athletic, worn out. I can't stretch this enough, you get the point.What a beautiful movie this is I recommend it to everyone.The man who wrote this was real intelligent and the director did a marvelous job with Lancaster. Exceptional idea and execution. Simple, yet twisted enough, leaving you to fill in the gaps in the end without being incomplete.Contemporary real film makers, who don't click away their talents on the computer and a green screen, should be taking notes on this one.Enjoy !!

Connie Cunningham Looking as if he had just finished his rendezvous with Deborah Kerr on the beach in "From Here To Eternity," Burt Lancaster costumed in only swim trunks that conform to his fit body plays Neddy Merrill in "The Swimmer." It is based on John Cheever's short story of the same name. The movie is set in the 1960s in a well-to-do northeast American white suburb populated with successful middle-aged business executives complete with fashionable and well-coiffed housewives and matching children and nice houses with manicured lawns and sparkly swimming pools. The cinematography expertly conveys the time and place. The movie begins with Lancaster immersing himself in a neighboring family's pool sitting atop a verdant hill. The wife and husband greet him cheerily and talk about the hard-drinking party they held last night and apparently every weekend. Lo and behold a buddy from Neddy's school days pops by, but he's in no mood to join Neddy for another swim in the neighbors' pool and neither are the neighbors. They prefer Neddy stay beside the pool and knock down a few drinks with the sound of ice tinkling in their lowballs and laughter and flirting filling the air.Neddy is a fish out of water. He politely shakes his head and looks out over the crest and sees that about every house on the way to his home has a pool. He announces that the string of cement ponds form the River Lucinda, in honor of his wife, and declares he will swim in every pool until he arrives home. The neighbors and his school buddy chuckle among themselves. But Neddy is serious and leaves smilingly, intent on swimming every section of River Lucinda.This is not an inspirational movie about a man trying to complete a self-imposed challenge and doing a victory lap at the end. It is about a suburban man in a country-club atmosphere who comes to realize with every stroke he takes in his neighbors' pools his life is not what he thinks it is, and death may just be around the corner. It is more than middle age crazy. This is a film about a man's thoughts and previous actions played out in the back yards of Neddy's peers who are not stuck in the past but are complacently comfortable in the present. There are happy, liberating, and gentle moments during and between Neddy's swims to be sure. He meets a young woman who was a childhood friend of his daughters and a small boy selling lemonade in need of a friend. But slowly the people in Neddy's enclave are not so kind to him and detest his taking dips in their pools or crashing their garden parties. Water can be cathartic, but not in Neddy's case. Mud and other impurities accompany him on his trip down memory lane, slowly awakening him from his amnesia as he visits a spurned lover and learns of debts way past due."The Swimmer" will be enjoyed by those moviegoers who like discovering the interior thoughts and experiencing the exterior reactions of an aging suburban stud put out in the rain with nowhere to go.