America does not look good up close.

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2010)

D and I saw the film this afternoon and both of us, over a meal later, had roughly the same conclusions about it: we both thought that it was a tough movie and that the characters were sharply drawn and well executed. We both thought that Bridges deserved his awards for an extremely well acted role. Our only difference was that I thought the first 2/3rds was a hard watch and she thought the last third was the harder to watch. If you see the film you will know exactly of what we speak. Having lived in the States and having traveled its roads, I found the watching uncomfortable; I've seen those bars, those towns and those bowling alleys and although filmed and portrayed well, they were too well to be comfortable. I have seen Bad in his many forms and none of them are remotely pretty. The male/female relationships in this film are too numbing to handle; it's like the song says, "Lookin' for love in all the wrong places". I can't really buy the press release , "The Harder The Life, The Sweeter The Music; the old saw about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear comes to mind. However, these thoughts are about the subject of the movie not about the movie itself; we are morphing into existential thought here and those thoughts are a factor of just how good this film was in that it brings out thoughts extraneous to the actual film. That, in my opinion, is the highest compliment that can be paid a film.