Lives intersect in Eastwood’s ‘Hereafter’

Matt Damon and Cecile de France in "Hereafter" George (Matt Damon) meets a French TV journalist (Cecile de France) during a book tour in Clint Eastwood’s supernatural drama “Hereafter.”

This movie may be as close to “Sleepless in Seattle” as Clint Eastwood ever gets.

His spiritual drama “Hereafter” begins with a harrowing act of God a tsunami wipes out an entire island village and closes with a subtle, gentle touch of hands, just the opposite of what we’d expect in a regular Hollywood film.

Leave it to Eastwood to direct a movie about the hereafter that’s mostly about the therebefore.

“Hereafter” seesaws between moments of moist tenderness and utter heartbreak, occasionally sandwiched between languorous scenes stretched to test the most durable of derrieres.

Eastwood, now 80, combines old-school storytelling with Peter Morgan’s New Agey script, and it reads just a little like M. Night Shyamalan on Prozac.

A beautiful French TV journalist named Marie LeLay (Cecile de France) becomes swept up in the tsunami in one of the scariest, best-rendered natural disaster sequences ever put on film.

Violently struck by debris, she drowns and becomes transported to a mystical place of bright lights and shadowy human figures.

But two Good Samaritans revive her. She continues to live her life, but nothing like she did before.

In London, inseparable twin brothers Marcus and Jason (George McLaren and Frankie McLaren) have been covering for their alcoholic mum so Child Services doesn’t take them away from her.

A terrible accident occurs, and young Marcus is ill-prepared to face a world tortuously alone and frightened.

George (Matt Damon) lives in San Francisco. He possesses a gift for communicating with departed loved ones, and no longer can bear the psychological burden of making money with his talent. (Read more…)

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