variation on a theme

Rating: 1/10 (4 August 2010)

Clint Eastwood is an absolute Hollywood icon, there is no question about the fact that he has made some movies that are timeless. However, the emphasis lies on 'has'.
In everything Eastwood has recently made, he keeps on reaching back to his glory years in the Western genre. As a result, all his recent films have the vices of a Western. You have the über-heroic, one-liner spitting main character, the paperboard psyches of the characters, the predictable plot, the pathos, the grande finale ending (with katharsis of course!),... But while those things are fun, appropriate and even essential in the Western genre, they are totally out of place in every other serious genre.
Because what Eastwood produces this way is a dragon of a movie that is not only unrealistic and unoriginal but also irritating and childish.
The tale of the grumpy loner who is at war with the whole world, but who, trough the friendship with an outsider, comes to see how he was wrong, is as old as the movie industry and only reserved for Disney films these days. The characters (but especially Eastwood's)are black and white caricatures and their psychological development is ridiculously unsubtle. The actors themselves don't help either. The Asian actors act like in a school play and Eastwood seems to have been too lazy to do any other character than in his last 20 movies. Above the constant annoyance of the incredibility come the, in this context, laughable cowboy-like one-liners and the bad dialogues. The over the top, pathetic (as in PATHOS) ending was thus perfect for this B-movie.
It irritates and baffles me that this movie gets such positive reactions and I hope that Eastwood stops making films and destroying my image of him.