Underwhelming

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2014)

My first Haggis film was In The Valley Of Elah. That fact coupled with the stellar cast had me going in with higher expectations than I'd usually like to set for any given film. Having said that, I don't think foregoing both reasons may have made me like it any better. The script was so filled with cusses I seriously thought it was meant to be funny at one point (when Howard was stopped by the police the second time, while being comically robbed by Ludicrous - which reminded me of another I would think unintended wtf scene - when Howard gave Luda's gun back to him. Yeah sure. That's the first instinct of any sane real person - just return a criminal's weapon back to him all the while quite nonchalantly telling him off he's an embarrassment to his whole race).
I guess that pretty much summed up my whole disliking of the film. It tries to portray real life but the characters were too unrealistically exaggerated. I just couldn't take the scene when the Persian (not Arab you asshole!) guy started to went off the Mexican guy accusing the latter of being a liar seriously. I know some foreigners (apologies for the blatant stereotyping but usually those from Eastern Europe, Middle East and South Asia descents) have similar xenophobia as the Persian guy but by God was he irrational or what? The sequence of events in his case was a one in a billion chance happening in real life.
Seeing as I'm off on a rant trail here, let's add Dillon and Bullock's ultra convincing portrayals of racists to the list. Newton was surprisingly bad but I would disregard it due to the horrible script again. Fraser should stick to his B-movies as that's what he shines in best. He will always be etched as Rick O'Connell in my mind. The only saving grace in this lukewarm mess were Cheadle, Esposito, Peña and Devine