Although the performances are strong, this is a very flawed and overrated picture.

Rating: 6/10 (23 November 2014)

I was quite underwhelmed by this film. There are many who consider this to be among the greatest films to be created by director Clint Eastwood, on the level of 'Unforgiven' or 'Gran Torino'. I sadly did not see a great film here, I mostly saw a decent but ultimately flawed and uninspired character drama.
Firstly, the films biggest asset is it's cast of actors. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon and Lawrence Fishburne all give great performances and it is quite interesting to see their varied acting styles interact. Tim Robbins probably gives the most impressive performance here, totally worthy of an Academy Award. However, the acting is dragged down by an uninspired and formulaic script. Many of the lines are tedious and cliché', and others are almost nonsensical and stupid. This does not apply for every exchange, however it is prominent enough to be an annoyance.
The plot is fairly standard fare. There are no shocking twists or particularly daring ways of presenting the story here. It is far from incompetent or laughable, however it almost becomes boring in it's predictability. The film's strongest narrative feature is it's solid pacing, allowing the actors room to showcase their acting talent, in fact much of the film appears centred around creating the perfect conditions for these actors to demonstrate their talents. The film's pacing is sadly ruined towards the end, when the film's plot is wrapped up and an overlong epilogue sequence does it's best to ruin as much of the good which came before as possible. Not only in terms of pacing, but also in terms of character and the film's thematic content, This ending was quite terrible and did much to destroy the film for me, specifically the moronic 'King' monologue.
The cinematography and set design is very nice, nothing outstanding but defiantly strong. It has a very well defined look and can get downright gorgeous at times, specifically in it's impressively shot opening sequence. However this good visual work is often undermined by a poorly used and highly repetitive soundtrack. Often wildly out of place with the actions on screen, and sounding quite cheap and melodramatic in places.
Overall, although the performances are good, I was quite underwhelmed by this picture. I could not look past it's gaping flaws and did not find it much above decent.