Powerful film, emotional manipulation

Rating: 9/10 (25 December 2002)

There have been few films that played with my emotions like this one (Lynch's Elephant Man and The Green Mile are a few others). Seeing this film just makes you angry... the characters are deep and the setting is ridden with conflict. This whole film is set in tension between Black and White culture, and the FBI vs. local authority. Many times I was asking myself, "can the FBI step in here? What is their jurisdiction?"
A brief homage to Gene Hackman. He is one of my favorite actors and I have yet to see him in a role that he has not performed masterfully. The whole time you knew that he was just a little smarter than Dafoe's "by the book" methods. The way Hackman made that subtly apparent is very admirable. I loved Hackman and Dafoe together in this film. I really, really got into it. 9/10