Preposterous, full of itself, and just not that good

Rating: 2/10 (11 February 2006)

This movie has some very powerful moments and good acting. I'm not denying this. But it had moments that were so poorly thought through, it made the movie simply suck as a whole. Sorry to use the high-falutin' term PREPOSTEROUS, but that's what it is. Unfortunately, it begins with the first scene, where two carjackers are talking about how they're being viewed as- well, crooks.
The double irony is not what I take issue with. What's incredibly stupid - so stupid that even punk-ass carjackers wouldn't do this -is that they hung out in a diner for an hour in the same neighborhood before committing a felony crime. Thus, collecting dozens of witnesses who'd be able to identify them. I'm no carjacker, but a tiny bit of common sense says you don't want to be noticed before committing a crime. But there it is, because it advances the "story". And Big Statement. Once you have something so incredibly stupid jammed into a script that purports to be "real" JUST to make your Big Point - folks, that's called hackwork.
Or how about one of the closing scenes, where the director stares at a burning car, then calls his wife on the cell phone? Gee, wasn't it as few hours earlier that his wife nearly got blown to bits in a explosive car wreck? So, does loving husband rush home? No. Guess it made a deeper scene this other way, the way it was shot. Oh, okay. Big Statement. C'MON!!
I mean
C'MON!!!
Too stupid to accept. And it was the preposterous moments like that spoiled the rest of the film. Otherwise, it would be "just okay" anyway. Because-
I live in LA, and what I saw in this movie was a view of Los Angeles sprung from a state-of-the-art laptop somewhere up in the multi-million-dollar homes of the Hollywood Hills, from a mind of an aloof armchair liberal. The writer had an agenda, rather than any sense of LA's reality and real vibe--and worse, the writer seemed to have no damn common sense whatsoever. Well-meaning try, but not a classic, not even all that good.
Industry folks can sometimes be too much like dogs licking their lowers. It's about LA, it purports itself to be deep and meaningful. Naturally, the Industry loves it, because they want to seem deep and meaningful, too. It's self-important hackwork tripe like this that gives LA its shallow reputation. While it has its moments and some good performances, it deserves to be buried in the discount bin, not lauded.
Disappointment.