Flawed attempt at a tragedy

Rating: Null/10 (21 March 2005)

Three men whose lives were marred when one of them was abducted by paedophiles are brought together again when the daughter of one of them is abducted.
This attempt at a sort of modern day Jacobean revengers' tragedy is marred by a complete lack of narrative cohesion. The childhood incident turns out to be less than marginally relevant to the modern-day drama, and there's loads of happenstance and frankly implausible off-stage incident. The resolution is as devoid of significance or meaning as the film's pretentious title.
The film is only held together Sean Penn's performance. Only he could have held together the somewhat surprising evolution of his character from shopkeeper to Shakespearian monster. If he'd started addressing the camera in iambic pentameters I wouldn't have been surprised. Marcia Gay Harden's twitching, eye-popping turn nearly sinks it though--did she think she was in a horror movie. Bacon's performance as a man with no apparent internal life may, or may not be deliberate.
Once again Eastwood serves up a slice of badly-lit gloom, in the (apparently justified) hope that anything downbeat will immediately be hailed as a masterpiece. Hollywood norms may be oppressive, but simply turning the formula upside down does not make for a work of moral complexity or artistic quality.