regular8

Mistaking Olyphant for anything except a watered homage to early Clint Eastwood misses the point of his performance. The talk, the eyes, the walk, the delivery sweetly remind of us how well the classic Clint did his thing before emasculation and how difficult it now is to replicate. The Western saga belongs to powerful males and conniving ladies if we believe the script of Deadwood. The high quality of the writing as to fundamental human foibles, trials, and triumphs is the gem here. If you can forget that it's not Clint on the screen and don't have a quivering sensitivity to fun cuss words, it's one great show.

This new Blade Runner has a very simple story line, or "narrative". It lacks the complexity of the original story. The new story contains dumb assertions and clumsy plot turns even for science fiction. It is about an hour too long. The soundtrack is overbearing. The sets and locations are ridiculous. This is not a very good movie. I fell asleep in parts of it.

I give it a 4 for the production value. The movie was in color, the camera was held steady, the lighting was good, the sets were well-staged, and the sound was clear. I also give it a 4 for the poor quality of the script. Unfortunately the good production value and the good acting by the principals could not elevate the script beyond the level of a film school senior project. How that script got made into an actual movie by professionals is beyond me, unless it simply signals that professional filmmakers these days have little idea as to script quality. How can the script be described to someone who hasn't seen the movie? I can say that the laughable jokes were weak, few, and far between, the characters were written without any depth (requiring the audience to create them), the story line was much too complicated and hard to follow for a silly comedy, and I wanted to movie to end about half an hour before it did. I did admire Crowe's performance. He is one of those rare people who can become the character they are asked to play. However I think he needs to loose a bunch of that weight if he wants to be an old actor some day.