“The Red Violin” stars a universal cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Greta Scacchi, Jason Flemyng and Don McKellar. It’s directed and partially written by François Giard with Don McKellar responsible for some intelligent scripting.

A perfectly manufactured red-colored violin touches everyone it encounters. The violin stirs up passion, greed, and obsession during it’s centuries old journey from one hand to the next. It finally reaches a Montreal auction house where an admirer of antique musical instruments (Samuel L. Jackson) discovers the long-lost masterpiece and must struggle with his own obsession.

It is rather tedious, yet critically strong in most aspects of film-making including solid direction. This makes me respect the film much more than I enjoyed it. The film relies on its magnificent violin playing, well-told story, strong direction and genuine performances to guide it to the end with style and grace. This isn’t quite my type of movie, but I am certainly glad to have the opportunity to experience this truly fascinating journey. Being a film I wasn’t too eager to see, I was surprised at how engrossing the result turned out to be.

This is a movie you can’t deny from being a well-made and throughly enthralling experience. Even if it does have a slow approach, the film manages to grab you from beginning to end. I actually had a growing bond with this certain violin complete with feelings, care, and attachment towards it. That makes this film effective in its own unique manner. I gained more care for this manufactured instrument more than the characters in the film. Not to say that I didn’t care about the characters, I was just more attached to the violin than the characters themselves.

The film succeeds in being an unforgettable and spellbinding undergo into a world of obsession. A walk through the most desired evil known as greed. It is definitely something worth seeing with the expense of preparing for a somewhat slow, yet tantalizing experience into a seductive realm created by a perfected work of art known as “The Red Violin”.