Not As Cool As It Wants To Be

Rating: 6/10 (25 December 2009)

I initially watched this movie back in 2000. In 2009, I was going through movies on IMDb to rate them and when I came across this I could not remember it at all. It had such a great rating and marvelous reviews, so I decided to watch it again.
I now know why I did not recall the film initially: it really is not that good. It's okay, it's watchable, but I really do not know why so many people like it so much.
It felt like this movie was trying to be too cool. I mean, no one talks like the characters in this movie do. With the amount of "cool lingo" that they use I began to get lost with exactly what the characters were really saying. It's is okay to a point, but this movie did it far too much where it became distracting and very unrealistic.
I really didn't care too much for the plot itself either. Again, it was okay, but I can think of plenty other cop dramas that are far superior to this one.
Kevin Spacey is one of my favorite actors and Russell Crowe is usually very solid, but neither one did anything for me in their respective roles. I know many people disagree with me on this, but to me they both meandered along and never really shined.
And the gun fight at the end was poorly done. Why can the good guys get shot multiple times and be just fine to continue, but the bad guys are always dead with one shot?
I give this movie a six and say that it is "slightly above average". It is an okay watch, but there are many better movies of the same genre out there.