Dirty Harry in retirement

Rating: 5/10 (28 March 2010)

I find most of Eastwood's films since his "Spaghetti Western" days get rave reviews, despite the fact that they're mostly pretty mediocre fare, and this one's no exception.
The basic storyline is familiar enough, if maybe having a few concessions to 21st century culture. But the litany of caricatures instead of more rounded-out rolls just annoys the hell out of me. Is there any group of people that are as "all evil all the time" as Walt's neighborhood gang? Or anyone as condescending and clueless as his son and daughter-in-law? And then Walt himself is horrendously uneven in his demeanor. He's gruff and bigoted one minute, and then drops over to the neighbor's house for a meal and stays on even after numerous gaffs and confrontations and even though the lady of the house seems to hate his guts. He fluctuates between unbelievably hateful and defensive to "old softy" without little reason or predictability. The overall impression being not very credible. He's obviously a character in a movie, and the script takes every opportunity to remind us of that.
Then after Walt and "Toad" assume the traditional mentor/lackey relationship mode, Walt starts out by teaching Toad to "talk like a man" with absolutely stupid, even silly results. I'm amazed that that whole bit didn't end up on the cutting room floor. I guess they needed some filler material. Anyway, that bit was lame.
And then to think that a drive-by shooting (with full-automatic weapons no less) and the savage, brutal rape and beating of a young girl wouldn't result in any arrests, but somehow the murder of a white guy would convince the neighbors to all come forward to accuse the gang, well, it strains credulity yet again. And further, somehow the fact that Walt was not really armed would seal the gang's fate, but gunning him down (again with full-auto weapons) would somehow have been justified if Walt HAD been carrying a gun, again just comes off as utterly irrational. Maybe the idea of an "honest" gunfight worked in the old westerns, but it doesn't in the real world. Again, silliness.
While I enjoyed much of Walt's curmudgeonly, in-your-face, brutal honesty, the over-the-top excesses worked against every really suspending your disbelief to get into the movie. I wish Mr. Eastwood would've toned down the extremes a little in all the characters and had a little bit better script to work with. Like "The Gauntlet" or "High Plains Drifter" or so much of his other work, a little restraint would've made SUCH a better movie...