I truly wanted to like it.

Rating: 5/10 (5 March 2019)

This is my first written review on IMDb ever, I didn't want to write it, as I never do, but this deserves it. This movie disappointed me a lot. I was expecting too much of it, I think.
Turns out, this was a very poorly written screenplay, incredibly bad directed acting. I'm in shock at knowing it got two Oscars for acting. I mean, no fault to the actors, they did as the script and directing told them to, they had the potential to be amazing. Sean Penn really dedicates himslef for this role, as well as Tim Robins. Kevin Bacon was very good as well, in my opinion, the best actor in this movie, just because he was the most believable. But, oh man, Eastwood didn't direct that acting at all. The script really didn't help either, it actually screwed everything. The dialogues are very poorly built, it very badly explores the characters past, without setting up an emotional bonding beween them and the viewers. I didn't care about anything happening on screen. The characters were dull, shallow, but had the potential of being amazing. That's the difference: the story had a good concept and skeleton to be worked on, but the screenplay completely blew it. The progression of incidents throughout the movie is incredibly bad, so awfully told. If this had a solid script, I mean, it could be a three hour long movie, no problems, a script that cared about shaping properly these characters' past, taking its time to give details on how it influenced the future we perceive, an actually misterious plot, that didn't induce you to jumping to obvious conclusions, if it cared about telling the stories of the many different characters that just serve as puppets to the narrative and are in no way explored, but, at the same time, are huge pieces of the storytelling, and only if it was directed by either Scorsese or David Fincher (the two directors I kept thinking would make this a directorial masterpiece), this would definitely get a ten.
I'm truly disappointed. This could have been an incredible film. It wasn't.