Very good, but too slow and overly complicated

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2004)

I decided to check out this film after hearing many good things about it, among others that it was the best film Curtis Hanson has made... and since Hanson also directed 8 Mile, a movie I enjoyed very much and have seen several times, I thought it would be worth watching. I wasn't mistaken. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was how darn slow it was... it never seemed to take off. Maybe it's the fact that there are almost constantly introduced new characters, maybe it's the fact that half of the actions in the film don't seem to have much of an impact on anything, other than move the plot a little bit forward(a tiny little bit)... I don't know. It never really captivated me, and I found myself often not paying that much attention to it. The film is good, no doubt about it... but it's just so slow... and in the end, it seems unrealistic. The very ending seems to be set up to throw in an action scene. The plot is good, but the pacing is bad. The script is good. The acting is great. The characters are well-written and well-acted. The dialog is well-written and well-delivered. The film has so much going for it, and, luckily, pulls most of if off perfectly. But that pacing is horrendous. I haven't read the novel which this film is based on, but I think that the film does it justice... anyway, that's what the author says on one of the featurettes on the DVD. The dialog has several memorable lines, the characters are conflicted and not immediately likable, but you eventually grow to like them, the script has some great scenes... but the pacing just... no. Maybe it had something to do with how hard it was for me to tell Kevin Spacey's and Russell Crowe's characters apart, partly because they looked alike and partly because both characters acted alike. I liked this movie, but I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't bored out of my mind for about a fourth of the run-time, scattered around the film. Too long and too big, in my opinion... but not bad. I recommend this to fans of Curtis Hanson, neo-noir drama-mystery-thrillers and any of the actors involved in it. 9/10