It just lays there with everything

Rating: 3/10 (10 January 2015)

I didn't find this adaptation to be a good venue for storytelling. As you watch this, you have no investment into any of the characters. It wasn't awful it was just there. Bradley Cooper in this role just filled in the screen without giving any essence to his character. And in the scenes where he's being a soldier, there was no immediacy, no sense of trepidation, no feeling of dread, just as if he was a kid and he was playing soldier for the game of playing soldier. I don't necessarily fault him for that, I put the responsibility squarely in Clint Eastwood's direction. And it is because it is a Clint Eastwood film I find that the expectations of a better performance was diluted and I don't know if it was the script but it just wasn't there. Even the Sienna Miller character was a one dimensional point. She was pregnant on the phone and his life is in danger wasn't moving enough and as the final scene where he drives off with the man who would eventually kill him was left empty. This wasn't Clint Eastwood's better film and Bradly Cooper just rolled over and took it with a limp one without challenging the work.