Does a poor job at getting its message across.

Rating: 6/10 (22 May 2012)

These type of movies that follow multiple different story lines and characters simultaneously can work out great but I don't really see this movie as a good and successful example of the genre.
Problem really is with its story. You could say that the movie is commenting on racism but to me it more was a movie about stupid people, doing stupid things, no matter what their ethnicity is. It besides tries to do and tell too much, in a too short amount of time, with as a result that the ending of the movie feels rushed and totally unsatisfying. Seriously, how are exactly all of the story lines resolved at the end? And how are some of the characters redeemed? The movie leaves an incredible amount of loose ends, with both its story lines and characters. In this particular case I wouldn't had minded seeing this movie being about one hour longer.
Most of the actions by all of the characters are besides some very unlikely ones. The movie does a poor job, building up to certain things and not all of the character's actions are explained well enough or make much sense. Sometimes stuff just happens, to add to the overall drama of the movie. It lets the movie feel forced instead of realistic, while this obviously still was the approach that the film-makers were aiming for.
It's not like I'm hating the movie but just too many things about it failed to work out to let me see this as a great or successful movie, at what it tried to achieve. It still remains a watchable enough little movie, also since it's never boring and always on the move. There is plenty happening, though not everything got handled equally great or interesting enough.
You could of course also still watch it for its acting. It has an all star cast in it, with maybe not the biggest names but still some well known and respected actors in it. Some of them impress, while others get pushed to the background too easily. I particularly liked Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle in their roles, while Sandra Bullock for instance got pushed way too much to the background.
Something that I thought was absolutely dreadful about the movie was its musical score by Mark Isham. It totally didn't suited the movie and was even kind of distracting at times.
Not a great movie and it even somewhat annoyed me with the way it was handling some of its developments and characters but it still remains far from a horrible movie as well and is actually still pretty watchable. Who knows, changes are you might even end up loving it, since the movie has a pretty good overall reputation and even won the Oscar for best picture, back in 2006.
6/10
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