Haven - 2004

What It Is: A Crash-style tale of the intersecting lives of several people living in the Cayman Islands. A little sex, drugs, rape, violence, and robbery are thrown in to keep things interesting.

Why I Watched It: It had a decent member review on Netflix and someone commented expressly on Orlando Bloom's performance. I was curious to see what he could do with a non-Pirate, non-Elf character.

What I Thought: It was good. Not as good as Crash or Babel of course, but good none the less. Very watchable.

There were at least two main plot lines, one involving Bloom being accused of raping his girlfriend and one involving Bill Paxton as a white collar criminal, but there were about a half dozen sub-plots with various characters. There was definitely a lot to focus on with Haven's decent mixture of tragic love, burglary, gun violence, pride, and tax evasion.

I was pretty impressed by Orlando Bloom. Don't get me wrong, I never thought he was a bad actor, I've just been waiting for him to do more than count on his boyish charm. Although he wasn't outstanding in Haven, it certainly made me realize that the potential is there. We'll see if he ever realizes it.

Highlights: The Cayman accents (very similar to Jamaican) were a fresh change and Bloom did a respectable job with his, a nice twist with Paxton's character, and Bloom's narration involving the history of murder in the Cayman Islands was pretty funny.

Who Should See It: Bloom's fan club, people that enjoy "lives-intersecting" types of drama, fans of Crash, Babel, 21 Grams, or even Kids.

How Soon: Take your time, rent it when you can't find anything worth watching and enjoy the discussions that will be sparked afterward.

Haven