Cleaning Up

Rating: Null/10 (19 August 2010)

I saw this together with the recent Sly Stallone director-actor effort, "Expendables."
That's because they have similar sensibilities of justice in the world. But Sly is an actor who makes movies. He knows that the effects he is looking for have to come from his face and body: the movie is just the delivery vehicle for his brand. Eastwood on the other hand is a filmmaker. Even in the spaghetti days, he was a collaborator with the director, reaching for an effect rather than a character.
He really is quite a filmmaker and just knowing he is still vital at nearly 80 is cause for some pleasure. Never mind that the only reason to make this is to parade that fact. He's colored it with a story about old-school suburban texture because he seems fascinated with what it means to be American and how film defines and reflects that. Never mind that the story arc is as feeble and cheap as "Million Dollar Baby."
Sly has never made a decent movie and never will. It isn't because he has dumb values. It is because he is an actor. Clint has made one excellent film and several very good ones. All of them are crafted well, coherently envisioned and narratively closed. I think I can summarize the style as economical. I prefer loose ends and open narratives, ones that deal with ambiguities, analogy and sliding truth. Clint instead shows and indicates nothing that does not move the narrative ahead. His shooting style mirrors this; investors love him because he doesn't diddle.
One risk he is taking; the use of the muscle car as a symbol of a lost nation may become quickly obsolete, and thus lose much of the punch he built around it.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.