Hereafter - B-

A famous French newswoman (Cecile de France) is on vacation when the quiet port town is hit by a tsunami. She has a near-death experience which challenges her to change life paths. Meanwhile, identical twin boys in London survive a terrible home life (with an absentee, drunken mother). But when one dies in an accident, the other is left rudderless, searching for any meaning at all. Last, a San Francisco factory worker (Matt Damon) has psychic abilities that he suppresses since they prevent him from a normal life. His brother (Jay Mohr) keeps trying to exploit his talent to help people (and make money).

The acting is mostly great save for the young McLaren twins. Directing kids has never been one of Clint Eastwood's specialties. What he is good at is drawing unexpected emotion out of routine scenes. He doesn't have to work too hard here since the movie deals with death and the adult actors bring their "A" game. But at some point (probably in the Swiss hospice building), the film started to feel manipulative with Eastwood milking every ounce of emotion out of the situation and actually throwing in scenes just to pull at the audience's heartstrings. It still worked OK until the 3 stories inevitably (and improbably) converge during the last 20 minutes.

And one has to seriously question the moral compass of George (Damon), whose selfishness won't allow him to help others (even as they beg him). But he seems to have no problem devastating people (like Bryce Dallas Howard) and wasting tens of thousands of dollars of his brother's money. And for a guy who never ever wants to "read" people again, he sure spends a lot of the film doing just that. The film supports atheism more than religion, dismissing millenniums of Islam and Christianity in a scant few seconds. Damon tries to bring some humor to the proceedings, but Eastwood seems to have no idea what to do with it.

The tsunami CGI is some of the worst in years. But the stark, dark cinematography punches up each scene. Eastwood really should find some money for a composer. He's been composing some of his stuff off and on since Unforgiven and while it worked for that sparse Western classic, an epic, multi-continent, multilingual mediation on death and the afterlife needs more than a few broken chords. B-