May Or May Not Be Too Much...Depending

Rating: 7/10 (4 November 2012)

Not the Director's best film, it is a complex coupling of two mega-stars in an action/character study that ends with mixed results. The stylish shootouts and the sprawling landscape are really the attraction here with the threading of streetwise cops and hoodlums holding it together in a rather long expose of a cat and mouse game of life and death.
The much talked about talk in the diner between the two stars comes off as rather ho-hum and the ending is not fully satisfying and seems elevated to an unnecessary mythical status.
The best parts are better than most films of this type but the inclusion of the home lives never elevates the story, in fact it seems an addition rather than an insightful inclusion. Not a bad try at adding some humanity to the genre but some of it doesn't click and the film is lesser for it.
Overall, forget the hype about the actors and settle in for a long story that may or may not be too much depending on your expectations and anticipations of the expansive underpinnings of humanity that is not usually served with this type of offering.