Terribly embarrassed for my boy Clint

Rating: 1/10 (2 January 2009)

This movie is simply plastic, thin and irrelevant. It felt like pieces from 12 other movies patched together. Everything about the film is painfully predictable...there's nothing original about this. It felt like The Karate Kid meets My Bodyguard. Clint's racism and bigot-ism is SO one dimensional and over the top that it feels completely phony. His character arc(the transition from racist to racist with a heart) also feels quite forced. The acting was literally embarrassing for just about every character but Clint. No one could deliver a darn line in this movie. They all felt like first time actors!(their ethnic backgrounds weren't the reason...the Father and Clints son's were the same way and they were white.) The humor was so generic, completely dependent on the impact of one liners....situations quite void of laughs. The antagonists were only in the film just enough to know who Clint is going to have to face at the end of the movie, but nothing more than that to make any kind of impact in the film. How about giving them some personality and a reason to be the baddies they are? How about maybe attempting to make them come off 3 dimensional? They were terribly constructed and their overall impact was null because of it.
At the end of the day this is simply a fish out of water movie, like thousands of others, where an outsider gets to learn a new culture and try to save the day for them, the only difference it's being made and led by a legendary movie God who seemingly has finally gotten to the point in his career where he IS willing to make films WELL below his abilities if he has nothing else to work on. I used to think Clint was one of the few unwilling to sacrifice quality for screen time, but this movie has shown me even Clint is human. I can't emphasize enough how much I respect/love his work.....but this movie was awful...Im CONVINCED his worst. My buddy and I spent half the time cringing from how embarrassed we were for him, and the rest of the time making fun of it. It was that hollow and pointless. For people making it out to be like it's the next great cinematic piece of history....I have to ask if this was the first movie you've ever seen. I see about 100 films a year and I can say with confidence that this film had the most on the nose dialog, the most exposition, the most generic and predictable storyline, the worst acting.....all of the above. It all stemmed with the script. This was an awful script from beginning to end and even the great Clint Eastwood and his multiple talents couldn't save it. Why he chose to make this we'll never know. But please do not read these glowing reviews and get your hopes up when going to see it. I'm astonished by how people are gushing over this. I walked out in disbelief. THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR IS FROST/NIXON.