Nasty People In a Nasty World

Rating: 1/10 (4 March 2008)

The tag-line for this movie should have been, "Dare to imagine a world where no one has an I.Q. above 80". The opening narration was fairly poetic and thought provoking. It raised my expectations for what was to follow and made the ensuing mess far more disappointing. A parade of mean and stupid characters competed mightily to mitigate any empathy that the situation might have engendered. Ten minutes into the film, I was fervently wishing that the missing girl might stay missing. It was bad enough to watch these characters moving through what they call a life. The thought of having to actually live amongst them makes my skin crawl.
The biggest failure of the film was the mumbled dialogue. Much of it was incomprehensible. It did not seem that it was by oversight so much as a celebration of the street scenes that the Aflecks remember from their childhood. You got out of it guys...Let it go...Nobody wants to wax nostalgic about the underbelly of Boston.