Good... But not that good.

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2004)

I had heard that this movie was really good, long before I saw it. When I rented it, I had some high expectations, but nothing that really defied how I would view it. I was more interesting at how it would turn out. I mean, there are some really good homocide/mystery movies (and TV series) out there. Would this be one of them? Well, there was only one way for me to find out. To rent it!
Jimmy, Sean and Dave are three friends who are out playing one day. They're just having fun, when suddenly a man dressed a police officer shows up. They take Dave away, telling him they're gonna go talk to his parents. But what they don't know is that these men are child molesters... Dave eventually manages to escape, but the child molesters are never caught.
Many years later, when they are all grown up and married and have gone their own separate way: Tragedy strikes. Jimmy's daughter is found dead in a park, and a homocide investigation starts off, with Sean in the lead. It turns out that on the same night that Jimmy's daughter was murdered, Dave did something bad... Noone knows what, except for Dave, but his wife saw him come home all covered with blood. So, something is definitely up.
Clint Eastwood directs nicely, different angles, nice colors and everything. The whole thing is very nice set up. Production design, photography, script and so on and so on. The dialoge is convincing, and the actors all do their part well. It's always nice to see Sean Penn in a role, but to have Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins in there as well, is almost to much.
I have two grudges with this film: Firstly, it's somewhat slow. At least the latter part of the film. The film ends at about 2 hours and 10 minutes, but it could easily have been 20 minutes shorter than that. My second grudge is when the killer is finally caught, it's not who you suspect it to be. But the reason for that, is because it's a very underdeveloped character who only popped up in two or three scenes prior to that, and there were absolutely no clues about it. It makes the investigation feel a bit "anti-climactic". But I'm willing to forgive that. You see, something else happens in the end, and I think this is what we're supposed to focus on. I won't tell you what it is, you'll have to see it for yourself. That is the real end to the film, and not the solve of the crime.
All in all, it's a pretty good film, that drags on after awhile. I think that being slow is the worst crime a movie can commit, but it's not that bad in this film. You might not want to watch it more than once tho, so I'd say this is mostly a "rent" film and not a "buy" film.
7/10