it could have been worse

Rating: 3/10 (19 June 2012)

Morgan Freeman must buy a lot of Hollywood lunches. He was the worst part of the movie. "Hey what film are we doing?" Same sincere and righteous Morgan, with different lines. The best part of the movie was Casey Affleck who demonstrated a lot of range. The character development was on par with a decent popular TV drama and can't be compared with any of the best of them. Lots of clichés in the gritty city. The story was better than the screenplay, which was rife with all the dialogue we could expect people to say in the situations they were in. Was that Ed Harris hiding behind the goatee? Oh yes, there he is trying to make something stick from that awful script. More editing would have helped a lot so that the clichés and the standard boilerplate dialogue could be tightened into a more dramatic and punchy story. The moral quandaries held up and elevated the content quite a bit above an ordinary cops and robbers drams. The ending could have gone in many different directions and resolved into something worth thinking about, which saved the movie.