The Hereafter (2010)

[Edgy MD]

Matt Damon --- in a latter-day version of his Good Will Hunting character --- plays a man of special talents which only lead to a deepening alienation. Only this time, instead of being an amateur ghetto polymath, he's a San Francisco medium looking for a career change. The tale of his attempts to get out as his brother keeps pulling him back in very gradually merges with two other independent story lines, one of a British kid with a junkie mother, and another of a French telejournalist/tsunami survivor.

So you have three protagonists --- all really sad. The suddenly-never-more-prolific Clint Eastwood directs.

[Edgy MD]

So yeah, as my description implies, but the marketing does not, this film opens with some pretty violent tsunami footage. All tsunami-weary folks may wish to steer clear.

[Frayed Knot]

So I was liking the three separate set-ups and all, and then when they all came together .... what exactly?

He does a reading for the kid even though he doesn't want to because he feels sorry for him standing outside all that time; then he meets the woman because he sees?/imagines? a future with her (seems like he acquired a new set of power suddenly) on account of I guess that he can tell her something about what she experienced or maybe that he liked the first chapter or two of her book he picked up just hours earlier? And for her I guess that letter he jotted down on the fly to her must have had a helluva punch.

Better set-up than pay-off.