Hard To Swallow

Rating: 3/10 (8 November 2005)

It's good emotional stuff at the time, but the very real weaknesses nag at you as soon as the film ends. It's a real fader. After a month you've forgotten all about it.
Once there's some distance from the emotion, I have to say that it sucks. Issues are isolated and blown out of proportion just to give an immediate emotional intensity. There is a lack of reality, intelligence, craft and creativity about the whole thing. And I found the racist, sex abusing cop's back story of being a dutiful son and then being a dramatic hero somewhat hard to swallow - after the event. Yeah, sure, at the time it felt like there was some significance there, but on reflection you see that it was just a dramatic scene in a Hollywood movie. And any suggestion that even a racist can also be nice to his mom is not worth making, except by racists to excuse and justify racist behaviour.
The confusions you feel at the time are the result of some blunt emotional exploitation by the movie makers. It's like a series of big expensive, well made adverts strung together, some saying vote conservative and some saying vote liberal. At the time the adverts seem to be saying something. But by the next day real issues and real life take over and you return to reality.