Poorly paced but in places enjoyable

Rating: 4/10 (2 February 2003)

Maybe I've been watching another film to some of the other people on IMDb, or perhaps it's because I've been having my own little classic movie fest over the past two days (with THE BIG SLEEP, THE THIRD MAN, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS etc). Whatever the case, I was decidedly underwhelmed by Spielberg's latest offering.
The cinematography was very pleasing, Leo did a good job, the period detail was all there, there was some nice use of music (though not nearly as much as I was expecting) and there were some brilliant, laugh-out-loud sequences but... it just didn't work for me. The film's pacing was all wrong IMHO: far too slow at the beginning and between every major con; by the half-way point I was clock-watching, something I very, very rarely do in the movies. Usually I get very easily sucked into a film but in this case I just wasn't. Oh, well, my loss I guess. In terms of rating, the film gets points for craftmanship but is dragged down by the pacing and Hank's phoned-in performance to a straight average mark of 5/10