Just a fair film

Rating: 6/10 (27 December 2006)

I honestly don't understand why some consider this a great film. It's got mostly decent acting, directing, cinematography, music, and the like, but frankly the drama seems mostly manufactured out of unlikely coincidences which destroy any illusion of reality. Take away those and you're left with an average episode of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." Three childhood pals encounter a couple of pedophiles pretending to be cops. One is abducted and abused for four days before escaping. Over the years the friends drift apart ... one becomes a cop, one becomes a criminal (now supposedly reformed), and the third, the one who was abducted, manages to get married and raise a family but has trouble keeping jobs.
One night the daughter of the ex-criminal is murdered. That same night the ex-abductee comes home covered in blood and with his hand injured, and he gives people different stories about what happened. Meanwhile, the cop is called in to investigate. The police initially suspect the ex-abductee but then their investigation pulls them in another direction as they learn more about the ex-con's past. While this is going on, the ex-con and his crooked friends are doing their own hunt for the killer.
So how's it all turn out? Well, it seems the murder was actually committed by a couple of idiot kids in a prank gone bad. They intended to pull this prank on a random motorist, but that random motorist just happened to turn out to be the girlfriend of one of the kids' older brother. Meanwhile the ex-abductee really had killed someone that same night, but it was a pedophile he saw molesting a kid in a car. But the hotheaded ex-con kills his old friend before the cop can unravel the mystery and catch the real killers.
Come on. This requires more suspension of disbelief than your average fantasy film. We are asked to accept far too many coincidences. Let's list them: 1. One childhood friend, who suffered trauma as a kid, sees the daughter of another childhood friend, an ex-con supposedly gone straight, on the night she's murdered.
2. This girl is killed by a couple of kids trying to pull a prank on a random motorist. However, the random motorist just happens to be one of the kids' older brother's girlfriend.
3. This older brother happens to have a father who had reason to dislike and want to seek revenge on the girl's father.
4. Meanwhile, this same night, the first childhood friend kills somebody else, injuring his hand in the process, and leaves that person's body someplace where it's not found for several days, which coupled with his seeing the victim on the night she was killed naturally leads to him becoming a suspect in that murder.
5. The cop who is called in to investigate the girl's murder is a childhood friend of both the victim's ex-con father and of the man who was abused as a kid and who saw the victim on the night she was killed.
How often does anything remotely like this happen in real life? Yet I've heard this movie praised for its stark realism. Please.
Don't get me wrong, if you can manage to suspend your disbelief and focus on the acting and other good aspects, this is an OK film, even though there are other problems besides the coincidences. For example, the way the ex-con's wife is revealed to be a rather cold-blooded b***ch who easily rationalizes away her husband's inexcusable crime, when there is no inkling of this aspect of her character earlier in the film. And the cop character's inexplicable behavior after his ex-con childhood friend basically confesses that he has killed their other childhood friend out of a mistaken belief that this man had murdered his daughter. He not only does not arrest the ex-con on the spot, as he gets into his car and drives away he smiles and talks happily on the phone with his wife as she tells him she's coming back home.
Yeah, I suppose it's a kinda "gritty drama," but realistic it's not. And it's not particularly profound, either.