kitellis-98121 I didn't know what to expect before watching this film. My hopes were that it would be similar to "14 Hours", the 2005 TV movie about Tropical Storm Allison, starring Rick Schroder, JoBeth Williams, and Kris Kristofferson. That one was a true story, also set entirely in a hospital, and featuring extremely good action sequences of the hospital flooding, as well as attempts to keep a new-born baby alive. I assumed that a bigger-budget movie about a bigger and more devastating storm (Katrina) could only be, well, bigger and more exciting.I was wrong."Hours" has barely any action at all. And the only scenes of the storm are from archive news reports. The film takes place almost entirely in a single hospital room and the corridor outside it. There are a few brief (and unnecessary) flashbacks to earlier moments in the protagonist's life, one brief scene on a roof, and a few scattered scenes in the hospital's generator room. And that's it.This film is NOT about a storm. It is about a father bonding with his baby during a power-outage caused by the storm, as he is forced to hand-crank a generator every couple of minutes to put a bit more juice into the depleted battery of his baby's life-support machine. That's the whole story. He meets a cute dog, and a couple of mindless looting thugs. But essentially, it's a film about a guy turning a handle and talking to a motionless baby.And yet somehow it is brilliant!The dialogue is beautifully written; natural, raw, and filled with emotional honesty. The acting from Paul Walker is sublime, nuanced, and heart-breaking. The direction is well-judged, with a finely tuned mixture of quiet, intimate character study, and precision winding-up of the tension, aided by some subtle and finessed editing, music, and sound design.Ultimately, this film is an exercise in making something substantial and satisfying out of nothing much at all. It succeeds completely in all it sets out to do, and is a thoroughly engrossing cinematic experience. It also feels like a true story - which I assumed it was throughout - but is actually a work of fiction. And that, despite the lack of action, is actually the only disappointing thing about it. I would have liked to look-up the real guy and his daughter online to find out how their lives have been since Katrina.So despite not meeting my initial hopes and expectations, this film was a near-total success, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

zee Unfortunately, films are supposed to be 90 minutes long. What you have here is a great 50-minute idea. There are two choices for the filmmaker. Make a 50-minute film (which won't qualify for most festivals and certainly not for wide release) or come up with more plot complications for your script.Some of the reviews say this isn't "realistic." They didn't pay enough attention to the news in 2005. Things like this did happen during Katrina, and they will happen again, guaranteed. People who take too much effort to keep alive get triaged and left to die. Major disasters don't come around often, and people in "civilized" countries think they are immune to this level of logistical problem, but they are not. Next 9.0 earthquake in California, it will also be this bad and worse. People will be dying in the hallways or hospital lawns, unattended, undrugged, in pain, bleeding. So that's not a problem I had with it. I believed in the realism.The real weakness is, there's really only one plot problem to be solved, and we keep getting riffs on that one thing. Watching this felt like listening to a song with only two notes...and for 90 minutes. When the dog arrives, you nearly weep in relief that it's something else (though not much of a something), but the dog doesn't get to stay around or get developed as a character. (and the baby isn't a character at all. It's a Macguffin, at best.) By the time other characters appear, you're already numb with boredom, and it's too late to save the film.But Walker's acting is good, so it deserves some stars.

doggett-clint I have always been intrigued by the catastrophe/natural disaster genre. I admire the non-fictional originality of this film. I'm not aware if this kind of situation actually happened to any of the Katrina victims, but it's sorely interesting.First of all, mostly solo movies are difficult for an actor to portray the story in a way that will hold the audience's attention. I was impressed with Walker's ability to do just that, as I also recently watched "Brick Mansions"-- his other final film-- and I was hugely disappointed. His reactions to the situation were mostly small; I was riveted as I watched his character, trying to decipher his internal emotions by his facial expressions and body language. With all he goes through, I could feel the stress and anxiety that surely plagued the character. I tried to place myself in his shoes.Second, I felt the movie places large emphasis on the importance of family. I believe a father's first priority is to care for his own, and provide for this family. I felt a strong sense of this in the writing, as Nolan did everything within his power to save his adorable baby girl.In connection with that, the director did a swell job of always having something happening on screen. Nolan was always trying to do SOMETHING to help his situation. Unfortunately at times, it still got a little dry. I admired the small inserts of comical relief; it was just the right amount. Finally, the ending was just heartwarming; I had a subconscious smile on my face that lasted.Overall, I praise the originality of this film and the obvious efforts that were put in by all those involved in the project. Definitely worth my time.

Danfinn32 Hours is a very good film, but reminding me of pResident Bush's comment of "way to go Brownie" for how the head of FEMA (mis)handled hurricane Katrina angered me and saddened me to no end. Work is a necessary aspect of life, work can even be a great thing, but our government should support people to not to have to suffer so much to succeed in life. pResident Bush could have done so much more to help the people of New Orleans and other victims of this hurricane, so sad that his response was an utter failure. Great movie though. Paul Walker plays a wonderful dad in a near impossible situation. This movie shows a lot of the best and some of the worst that humans can be.