this movie, like a book of short stories, can hook you once and annoy you the next. The segments follow a violin for 3 centuries obviously shooting for a wide range of settings, thus a wide range of stories and characters. But they are all much different. The Red Violin will be rewarding for those who pay attention, and a pain for those who don't, because the transaction of the violin from person to person isn't smooth, whoever is not willing to pay attention should steer clear. I definitely recommend it to all big movie buffs, because those willing to see it, should. I really enjoyed Don Mcellars work before, and this is no different. Some segments, like 'Vienna' are very enjoyable and sad (in a good way, like bambi's mom getting shot) well some like 'Oxford' are dark and depressing. You may not leave thinking it's spectacular, but ya gotta respect it. Thumbs up.

This is art. Real art. So few films try for this much.

My sadness is that its appeal will be limited to polyglots, musicians, and lovers of costume drama. It's worth so much more than that. Beautifully shot, sensitively scripted and acted, and cleverly executed, this deserves more awards and greater coverage than it's going to get.

9 out of 10. I dock one point because Girard occasionally lets the pace drop to deadly, and because Jason Flemyng and Greta Scacchi irritated me beyond words - but that's not Girard's fault.

I didn't know if there was even the slightest chance this was based on a true history so I searched for the name of Nicolo Bussotti and learned that the character in the movie was fictitious, although parts of the red violin's origins WAS based on the life of Antonio Stradivari who lived during the era that opened the story. I rather enjoyed this picture and the way it traced the violin's history through the centuries, along with the tarot card gimmick that introduced each of the major turning points in the instrument's history. Most of the narrative appeared to fit historically, although I did have to laugh when the Oxford violinist Pope (Jason Flemyng) declared his lustful desire for Lady Victoria (Greta Scacchi) by stating "I feel a composition coming on". That was just such a concession to modern dialog that it disrupted the continuity of the scene for me. I'm still chuckling about it.

What I wasn't prepared for in the story was it's twist finale, given Charles Morritz's (Samuel L. Jackson) scholarly and professional approach to determining the violin's authenticity. As the instrument's restorer (Don McKellar) proclaims that "This is the single most perfect acoustic machine I have ever seen", there's still no indication that the pair would conspire to pull off the crime of the century. The film's ending with Morritz making a clean getaway rivaled the revelation made regarding another Samuel Jackson character, that of Elijah Price, in a movie that came out just a couple years after this one titled "Unbreakable". He was even a collector of sorts in that movie too.