Written by a college student....

Rating: 1/10 (22 October 2010)

...and it shows. Only a child would have a worldview where violence is trivialized, spousal abuse is glorified, and nothing, I mean not one single thing, makes any sense. Have you read the most excellent "World's Most Dangerous Places"? Where Robert Young Pelton talks about how a Pakistani bus crash is like taking a coffee can full of mice and metal shards and shaking violently and dumping it on the ground? Well this movie is the film-making equivalent of a Pakistani bus crash. It is like they took various action movie memes and put them in a coffee can. Car chases, explosions, shootings, sex, and jumping off buildings. Then they added the metal shards. Then they shook the can really really hard* and spilled the contents out on two hours of celluloid. Only a college kid could think that shooting guns was about loud noises and pretty flashes and not some lethal experience. The soundtrack was a cross between the Pink Panther and a Daffy Duck cartoon, only clumsier. Putting the R&B great "Express Yourself" behind a domestic battery scene was so clumsy as to be criminal. What glib vacuous crap-- marital chit chat and banter during shootouts? Like I said, the infants that wrote, directed, and produced this movie have never ever been in any violent situation, not even a street mugging. I've been in rooms where guns are drawn in wrath and believe me, it is nothing like this tripe. The only thing that rings true in the movie is the marriage counseling, surely because all the self-absorbed people that made the movie had plenty of real-world experience in that. The movie has snail pacing at the start-- 16 minutes in and I was cleaning my nails. Then the implausibility starts. Then the flat-out absurdity. Fifty rewrites and it shows. Want a good rewrite? Vince Vaughn goes to the gyyyrll power agency where Jolie works, and one at a time asks each over-breasted airhead where Jolie is. Just as they start to answer Vince shoots them in the head. One after another. Then he goes to Brad's work and shoots that secretary and all his co-workers in the head. Then then he looks into the camera, says "One day you'll thank me for this" and shoots himself in the head. Then 113 minutes of stills with Brad and Angela naked. Roll credits and take the awards at Cannes.
Oh Christ mother of Mary, I just got to the part when she throws a knife in his leg. So he just pulls it out the engages in more of that patented BS Hollywood banter. Have these clowns never left the dormitory? Have they ever even suffered a paper cut?**
Now we get to the biggest concern raised by this movie. It grossed $478,207,520. When space aliens come to visit our planet they will observe this and mark the human species for extermination. OK, there are a few good things about the movie. The director took the advice of the women who commented about his Bourne movies, "Get a tripod and some lights." There was some steady-cam and they had to shake the frame a bit since imitation gate weave*** is more interesting than the story. At least it did not jump around in time. When the smash-cut between Bradster and Angie-Angie-pretty-Angie they at least were staying in real time. But grossing half a billion dollars? I am ashamed to share DNA with a species that finds this film entertaining. Its like people would pay 9 bucks to have those Japanese seizure-inducing anime scenes flashed in their eyes for two hours. Folks, a hit of acid is a lot cheaper and you will leave the experience far more fulfilled then when you walk out of the theatre after this stinker.
*Gratuitous Tropic Thunder reference. **Gratuitous Swimming With Sharks reference. ***gate weave is the tiny movements of the frame due to the imprecise repetition of the metal gate in old movie cameras and projectors.