Clichéd pulp

Rating: 4/10 (29 April 2013)

Either the intention was to give us some serious comic predictability or the pastiche of caricatures just didn't hang together as they made it. Rosamund pike is laughable - how could a lawyer be so dense about even basic investigation and suffer from a total lack of any initiative. Between that, her sponge roller hair clapped to her head and the over enunciated husky voice with her teeth almost not in properly made her character idiotic. It just wasn't even an old fashioned PI moll part either she either can't act well or the script and direction didn't do her any favors. Those scenes where she rolls her eyes like nookie bear made me laugh out loud. The close character scenes are painful and the baddie scenes again gave me much mirth. A 10 year old boy couldn't have made up such clichéd nonsense. The car scene was well done as was the two thugs foiling each other in the house while trying to get jack ( there had to be two ). Cruise Was watchable but the film is stilted and has every two dimensional crime thriller scene imaginable. I don't buy the nods to older movies such as Dirty Harry, it's not good enough for that, the direction is average and it amused for all the wrong reasons. Dim stuff.