Cloud Atlas Extended Trailer #1 (2012)

Cloud Atlas - review

Tom Hanks sports a variety of noses and Hugh Grant gives us his best body-painted cannibal in this wildly over-reaching and not entirely unsuccessful adaptation of the David Mitchell novel

Suck on this ... Tom Hanks and minted Halle Berry in Cloud Atlas

An artichoke that fires lasers; montages that span the ages; Jim Broadbent saying "ruddy"; women on conveyer belts in the nuddy; evil oil partisans; bed-hopping artisans; parasitic brain worms; Halle Berry with a perm; sex, death, love, space; cannibals, parables, war, race.

1. Cloud Atlas
2. Production year: 2012
3. Directors: Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
4. Cast: Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Tom Hanks
5. More on this film

Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and Andy and Lana Wachowski (the Matrix trilogy) are banking on there being something in that lot that catches your eye. The co-directors of this adaptation of David Mitchell's Booker prize short-listed novel, who reportedly coaxed $100m out of independent financiers to convert the book to the screen, have taken a big risk with this roaming behemoth of a movie.

They tackle the complexity of the novel by introducing two innovations – one surprisingly deft and one absolutely daft. Mitchell's book is a compilation of six separate-but-linked short stories, which run consecutively and range from the troubled Pacific voyage of a 19th century abolitionist to the day-to-day struggles of a small tribe living on post-apocalyptic Hawaii. In between we call in on a genius 1930s composer, an investigative journalist digging into a conspiracy in the oil industry in 1970s California, a pompous book publisher trapped in a modern day nursing home, and a dystopian future where workers are farmed to supply the labour needs of a fast food chain. The three directors have carefully re-arranged the chronology, splicing between the stories based on theme. It's a daring shuffle, but it works. By zipping back and forth across the timeline they're emphasising Mitchell's original message – that the human experience is essentially universal across the ages.

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