An absolutely terrible movie ... Not up to Eastwood's (or anyone else's) standards

Rating: 1/10 (18 January 2010)

I have enjoyed every Clint Eastwood movie I have seen, until now.
There were numerous problems that I had with this film:
1) The plot and scenes were so predictable, it wasn't even entertaining. 2) The acting in this film was absolutely horrid - including Clint's. The lines and acting were so strained throughout the entire movie, I was never able to get into any of the characters. Not even for a second. 3) The movie's message could have been transmitted more effectively with 90% less of the non-stop racial slurs and insults that Clint made throughout the movie. He's a bigot. I got that after the first 20 seconds he looked at his neighbor's home at the beginning of the movie. I didn't need to keep hearing it rammed down my ears every other minute of the movie ... I wasn't going to forget that he's a bigot. 4) Regardless of the situations that supposedly brought Clint closer to his neighbors, it was totally laughable that anybody from the Hmong family would spend a minute with somebody who spouted such vile about them constantly in their presence. It is inconceivable to me that the daughter would bond any sort of friendship with anybody as insanely bigoted as Clint's character. Even if she was helped by Clint, that gratitude would have evaporated within minutes of hearing all the racial slurs made against her, her family, and her people. 6) Is there a dimension less than 1? If so, I would assign that dimension to the depth of every character in the movie. 7) Heck, I was insulted by Clint's character, and I'm not even Asian. After a certain point, I started fast-forwarding through the movie to get past each of his embarrassing tirades. They weren't character development, and they certainly didn't add anything to the movie after the first 10 minutes. 8) Even Clint's constant growling throughout the movie got tiresome. In his earlier films, he didn't have to sound tough all the time. You just knew he was.
If I hadn't watched this at home, I would have walked out. I did watch it to the end however, just to see how the main plot line conflict was resolved. (I won't say how it happens, in case you still want to waste your time on this film)
Even the conflict resolution was unbelievable. About 20 minutes prior to that resolution, it was mentioned exactly why that supposed resolution wouldn't have worked.
Normally, I would have given a film of this caliber about a 4, because Clint's acting would have raised the bar a little. Instead, this gets a solid '1' from me because Clint's acting actually was as bad as everybody else, and I expected better from him.
Sigh.