This film has great exterior shots of the American west and some really bad acting. The theme is OK--that coincidence may be more than just that. So what else is there to say?IF you have never been to the west or you want to recapture an experience, then you must see this film.So is this film fun: yes and no. If you can afford Mania's awful acting, then this film clearly is recommended for you!

Backlight is one of the best films I've seen this year. There are various ways this film can be read and a number of messages implied from the various stories of the characters. What makes this film superb is how the path of each characters determines and influences the other character's lives. There are also solid performances although the are no big stars in the cast. It's an independent film but shot extremely well which makes it look rather mainstream like a high budget film. The script is also brilliant with nicely fleshed out characters and plots which intertwine neatly in the end to show how everything is related. By all honesty this movie is so inspiring that I was yanked back in my seat by emotion. It is a rare movie which made me think about the meaning of life and how we are all connected to each other. Most movies I've seen have no purpose or meaning of any kind. This had it all, plus cliffhangers that went on. Lucy' story is full of suspense and all the other stories mixed together are so emotional. Every single frame of the film is filled with a purpose. Each word and action accounted for some point later on. It is so pleasing finding a script that controls me and makes me look like an idiot in the face of perfection.

I pretty much agree with everything Yarso86 said, with the exception that I was bored by the film when it wasn't even halfway done.By far the scenes between the mother and daughter are the worst. The actress who plays the mom is completely over the top, with utterly absurd reactions to everything the daughter says, and the lousy script doesn't help either. Their story is also the worst, with a completely absurd and pointless plot device that makes absolutely no sense at all. It reminds me of something akin to a Goosebumps or some Nickelodeon TV episode.Also, there's some voice over work in the beginning of the movie that makes me think that the post-production was done in Portugal and they couldn't find an American English native speaker so they got a Portuguese who does a fake American accent that just deteriorates as he reads his lines, which get progressively worst, using expressions that no American would use.To top it all off, the best actor in the whole film, Joaquim de Almeida, an actual international actor with serious work under his belt with some of Hollywood's biggest stars, only gets half a dozen lines of dialogue in the whole thing, mostly talking to himself, although in retrospect that makes sense because he would pretty much shame any of the other actors in this film who tried to be in the same scene as him.Image wise,like Yarso said, some of the footage has that very clean HD look, which becomes very camcorder like in some scenes, seriously clashing with the beautiful (and often overused) slow-motion shots.I'm giving it a really low rating because I honestly believe that what's already on here is over-inflated out of a misplaced sense of national pride.Again, like Yarso said, the director does actually show some promise, but he really needs to back away from script writing.

Backlight is a brilliant script: A great story, with nicely shaped characters whom, one way or another, got me thinking "Sometimes, life is so full of coincidences that it's almost unreal.". Obviously, it doesn't matter how strong the script is, if it's transformation to the big screen is sloppy, but with Backlight, everything works in perfection. The multi layered story has been excellently transferred to the screen and the final product is like a perfectly tuned symphony: No note is false, and as the band plays, you get swept away by their music. One of the reasons for this, is a great cast, of whom I think, no one deserves more credit than others... and then again: I really loved Joaquim De Almeida, but above all the memorable character of Lucy, played by the young actress Skyler Day. She will always shine brightly in my mind. A definitely must see movie!