Delightful alternative to blood & guts movies of modern days. And it was based on a true story about prison gardeners. Jim & I really enjoyed the lighthearted plot and happy endings for people who thought their lives were as good as over.

We watched this on DVD last night, New Year's Eve. It says this movie was "inspired" by real events, but I take it the characters are all fictitious. I actually found a Colin J. Briggs who writes gardening books, but I was not able to find out if he is who the main character is based on.Clive Owen is Colin Briggs, and the opening of the movie has him throwing a trash can through the window of a flower shop, getting some yellow roses, and delivering them by bicycle to the home of Primrose, as a way of saying 'goodbye.' Then he calmly waits for the police wagon to pick him up. We find out much later that this is actually near the end of the story and most of the movie is told as a form of flashback.Briggs is in prison because in a fit of passion, as a very young man, killed someone. After 15 years he just figures he will never get out. But a new program designed to prepare prisoners for eventual parole, and skills for a job, has him transferred to a low-security compound. There are no fences and each prisoner shares a dormitory style room with one other prisoner.Briggs finds himself roomed with veteran actor David Kelly as Fergus Wilks, who looks like he won't live too much longer. Wilks was in prison for killing his 3 wives, he became a very bad person when on the booze and turned himself in to avoid further such incidents. He doesn't plan to ever get out. But he and Briggs eventually form a very close friendship.The meat of the story gets going when the governor of the prison asks the inmates to fashion a garden on the grounds. Even though none of them ever did anything like this they took to it, read books, and made a very attractive flower garden. This caught the attention of Helen Mirren as famous master gardener Georgina Woodhouse (which I found today is a very common name in England).Briggs was the natural leader of the group of inmate gardeners, he quickly developed a sense of how to do things. In the process he developed an attraction to Natasha Little as Primrose, the daughter of Georgina. Primrose had no gardening talent, but otherwise a very intelligent and attractive young woman.A very nice movie, a nice story, entertaining, with very good acting. Highly recommended. While it has many romantic-comedy elements, it is not overdone at all, no slapstick.SPOILERS: We find that Briggs was in prison for killing his own brother, whom he caught in the act with the girl he was hoping to marry. He didn't really intend to kill him, but in his rage that was the result. During the story we see, Briggs is the first to be paroled, and even with the help of Georgina is unable to find a gardening job. After months he is still delivering flowers by bicycle. So he decides to return to the low-security prison and his gardening, and that is why he broke into the flower shop, it was the way he broke his parole. The yellow roses signified "goodbye". But Briggs and Primrose were able to talk again at a fancy London flower show the inmates participated in, and he asked her to wait for him when he got out again in a few months. She said she would.

I am not an overly cynical person. I do believe redemption is possible. I even like puppies. I do not, however, like being manipulated. And I certainly don't like people trying to do so as blatantly as in this film. The film has been adequately synopsised elsewhere, so I won't go into plot details, but thinking back(and it was only about an hour ago), I can't think of a single hight point of it all. There were two dimensional characters, uninspired dialogue and one of the most awe inspiringly unoriginal story I have probably ever seen(I know it's based on a true story, but I seriously doubt how it actually happened was anything like this). The cinematography was little better than a gardening magazine, and sloppy editing marred whatever measly remnants remained. Oh, and they also left one plot strand not even remotely finished(with the young lad who banged up the tea lady, did the actor quit halfway?). So basically, don't like this film much. Perhaps I am being too hard on it. Perhaps there is something to be learned in it's butt-thrusting simplicity. All I know is I really don't like this saccharine encrusted film, and that's all that I really have to go on here. Avoid this film. Go watch 101 Reykjavik. Remember what emotion is like.

I would probably go to see Clive Owens and Helen Mirren read the phone book, and I practically did in "Greenfingers," but it's still fun for fans of Brit coms and such. While Clive's "Colin" isn't one of the hardened convicts of HBO's "Oz," he is emotionally cut-off and his blooming with his flowers is sweet, facilitated by mentor David Kelley (from "Waking Ned Devine"). The love story doesn't quite ignite.The other reformed-through-horticulture prison-mates are the usual Brit class and race rainbow, so are hard to understand sometimes.It will make a nice episode of PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre." (originally written 8/4/2001)