messiercat

Samuel Jackson shows off his acting chops in this gritty action thriller, with supporting actors doing a great job. He plays a man fresh out of prison after twenty five years who wants to go straight, but as it's mentioned in the movie, cons always say that at first. His past catches up to him in a huge way. Sure, we've seen plenty of this before, but the action moves right along with suitably dark sets and mood music to accompany all the nifty twists and turns. A nice surprise is young Ruth Negga who more than holds her own with the veterans. All in all a good effort, well worth the time to seek out, especially for Jackson fans.

This movie certainly had style. It seemed to be directed well. Editing was crisp enough and on the surface it looked pretty interesting. Cinematography was basically very good and quite inventive with a lot of action. But the whole package was a mile wide and an inch deep because the screenplay was a muddled mess, the storyline was laughably inane. Mickey Rourke and Lili Taylor, two actors who can really deliver the goods, were incredibly wasted and about a third of the way into it you realized it was going to be all style and no substance, and that was when I just stopped caring. A clue as to what happened comes when the credits roll. Producers, co producers, associate producers, executive producers galore. Too many cooks in the kitchen destroyed the soup. I've never quite seen a movie like this that had promise and so much energy put into production, but ultimately fell flat on it's face. The first movie that I've seen where I'm completely at a loss as how to rate.

Apologies to Deadwood for any comparison. If you're just going to wave a western in front of a camera, a viewer has to ask the valid question - what's the point? Apparently all involved with this enterprise thought that superficial pretense could carry the day and ridin' around 'n ominous music would convey all ya need to know about some sort of story. The casting was positively ludicrous. Every one of the twenties something pampered southern Cal principles here looked fresh out of a shower and the makeup trailer, and I'm telling you, dentistry in the late 1800s must have been pretty cutting edge with all those pearly whites on display. A very lame and uninteresting production that wasn't even worthy of having Val Kilmer snoringly narrate the tale with innumerable pregnant pauses, but maybe having Timothy Olyphant and John Hawkes lookalikes was supposed to make up for all it's low budget deficiencies. A real poser. Bleh.