Okay. But not one of Eastwood's best.

Rating: 7/10 (28 August 2004)

(spoilers!)
While I did find the deceptive twist in this movie interesting. Overall the movie is same IL same IL. Nothing new retread. Guess this should have been obvious by the stupid DVD release trick. No extra's on one and the hard to find 3 disc set is the only other option. Now I'm being really generous by giving this movie a 7. Simply because there's nothing wrong with the movie in a certain sense. But it's unoriginal.
I didn't find Sean Penn to be overly great. Although better than his reputation has allowed. He was a lot better in 21 Grams. Much better script to work with. I was impressed with a lot of performances in 21 grams. (except the title.)
Tim Robbins was okay, Kevin Bacon was a bit too much of a statue.
But it was a mostly dragged out movie with a very good last half hour. Which is probably why I'm so generous. I say deceptive because looking at the ending is confusing. (via the cheat method. look at the ending first) At one point thru the cheat method it became obvious to me at the time that Tim Robbins did it. But watching the movie right, this was not the case. Frankly that wife of his, though playing a sympathetic person.. got her husband killed. The very end though I found to be wrapped up way to fast. I found it amazing that this movie got the attention that it did. Perhaps because it was a Clint Eastwood direction. Everyone's eyes glazed over. To me his best movie, though not my favourite is Bridges of Madison County.
7/10
Quality: 8/10 Entertainment: 4/10 Replayable: 2/10