How to ruin a story with great potential...

Rating: 3/10 (28 February 2011)

Just give the story to an incompetent screenwriter and let Clint Eastwood direct it.
Like all Clint Eastwood movies it delivers in the following key areas: The pace is slower than slow, the characters' actions are illogical, it's filled with unrealistic and ridiculous dialogue and the story often has no idea where it's going.
Constantly I found myself wondering: 'Why does he say that?', 'Why is this in the movie?', 'What's the POINT?', and finally 'Burn my eyes!'.
The worst thing is that the story could be great movie, but just a skilled chef can turn a recipe into a masterpiece, it turns into a disaster if you give it to incompetent cooks -- this is what happened here.
The fact that the movie was nominated for Oscars instead of Rasberries baffles me. The only actors that give a believable performance in the movie are Bacon and Fishburn -- that's because they had the least dialogue to work with.
All the others do their best, but it's hard to be impressed with an actor's performance when he's saying and doing ridiculous and illogical things.
I could go on and on with listing the flaws in this movie, but it's better if you see it for yourself. Just watch the second to last scene of the movie, where the main character's wife talks to the main character -- try not to throw up.
The funny thing is, I would still recommend for you to watch this movie. Why? Because it's probably one of the most overrated movies of the century, with ten nominations and two awards and an IMDb rating of 8 (!). You have to see it to believe it.