Not nearly up to his former standards.

Rating: 5/10 (9 January 2009)

I was greatly looking forward to this movie given the previous works of Eastwood as director. After Mystic River, Unforgiven, MIllions Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, and others his movies are usually worth seeing. The premise of this movie also seemed quite intriguing from the previews.
The good: 1) Eastwoods acting in this movie is very solid and quite entertaining as he growls his way through most of it. He has some solid scenes that remind one of a younger Eastwood in his more sinister roles.
2) The very basic plot of the movie is quite interesting.
The bad: 1) The actual scene by scene flow of the movie is extremely disjointed. Many things take place that are out of character and seem hugely rushed. The movie's transition of the lead character comes off as very unbelievable.
2) The movie has far too many scenes that come off as clichés. One thing Eastwood has tended to excel at in other movies is stay away from the expected Hollywood movie models and instead keep the audience intrigued through story lines that don't follow set storyboards seen in dozens of previous movies. This movie has been seen before many times with different actors and a very similar storyline.
The ugly: 1) The movie's acting by the majority of the leading cast (Beyond Clint) is horrific, I don't use that word lightly but in this instance it is warranted. There are scenes in the movie that are acted so poorly that you are completely removed from the immersion of the story and are left thinking "wow, that was just bad". The two main roles of both Sue, Tao and many of the other Hmong are very weak performances and ironically tend to come off as caricatures of the cultural group more then a real and honest portrayal.
2) Much of the movie is spent listening to almost lecture types of dialog from the character Sue meant to portray a learning session by Clint's character but more often that not coming off as completely artificial. Much of this type of thing brings the movie into the realm of an after school special type of movie feel. Having a message in a movie does not entail one has to be preached at. Eastwood has done an amazing job in previous movies of putting important messages into his movies without being preachy. Unforgiven and Mystic River are two shining examples. Here, he does not even try to blend the message into the film as he has in the past. Unlike past movies the message comes out in events that could actually take place exactly like depicted on the screen, in this movie we don't get the message in a realistic fashion at all and instead get it in a form expected from a video you expect to have watched in class at high school.
Overall a serious disappointment from one whose films are usually top notch.