twilight

Rating: Null/10 (18 June 2010)

You can watch this film as it is, as it presents before you; which is to say, with the audience appeal package that the story carries with it: -immigration in a contemporary view, facing western societies as an institution in transition, to the point that the once American way of life quite neighborhoods are occupied and relived by the families from once enemy countries. -The tense action promise that never unfolds but which carries the film. As entertainment, this is worth the ticket because we wonder about what's happening next, even if nothing ever really happens (in a physical graphic meaning). So it's a tense promise of action, that never ceases to be a drama in the end. Good genre play.
You can place the film within the political views of Clint Eastwood, within the place that racial and gang conflicts assume in such suburban areas as the one in the film. one might want to see this as a "political" film, or as a "socially concerned" film.
You can choose to watch the above, and consider other layers you may feel right. I want to see this film as a solid step in the work of Clint, the director. To me, this film is clearly one of the twilight of his career. Not because he's no longer young, but because this film is about clint's career as an actor as it is about his own cinema. That's why we have his own character as a parody of all his tough, intolerable cops and cowboys, from Leone to Siegel. The fun thing is how his character becomes his own anti character in the end. How the tough "feel lucky punk" guy ends up not being violent in order to beat the bad guys. That's certainly a twist which has more than the simple surprise of us getting the deceit while watching the film. I hope Eastwood lives on to make a dozen new films, but this film has the flavour of a quiet conversation between a filmmaker and his audience, like the late Kurosawa's or Welles, although Eastwood is pretty far from the magnitude of what those 2 achieved. But Clint's career sure is a vintage car, worth being driven and seen. It's not about performance, it's about commitment.
My opinion: 4/5
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