Good, definitely not great

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2003)

Some of the acting (Sean Penn, Marcia Gay Harden) was one dimensional. Some was great (Tim Robbins). The movie had trouble ending, as if the director and editors were searching for a conclusion and finally took one because they had to. (It seems for example that the murder investigation is done well with standard mystery cop show work, except at the end Tim Robbins' character disappears and the cops seem to immediately give up on finding what happened to him.)
I really got tired of seeing Marcia Harden's "distressed" look.
This is a dark murder mystery that has nothing to it that makes you feel good, be prepared to be depressed when you leave the theater. Some of the side shows (the cop's wife who calls but doesn't speak to him, Jimmy's wife's reaction to what happens at the end) are plain silly - because we don't know enough about the relationship of the cop and his wife, and we haven't seen enough of the Jimmy wife character (beyond her natural bias towards her own daughters rather than the daughter from a previous marriage) to make the behavior convincing.