good for a rental... a bit overrated

Rating: Null/10 (26 June 2004)

Overall it was a thoroughly watchable movie. The acting was superb.
It did suffer, however, from being a bit predictable and a bit too long. And not only that, the plot and its "what actually happened that night?" resolution hinged on so many coincidental random events as to be improbable and unbelievable.
*** SPOILERS WARNING *** Sean Penn's daughter, on the night she is going to elope to Las Vegas with her boyfriend, runs into her boyfriend's younger brother and pal late at night on a dark, empty street who in turn accidentally shoot her then feel they have to kill her so she won't tell anyone. Meanwhile, estranged friend of Sean Penn who was sexually abused as a child happens to have seen the daughter minutes before she leaves last place seen alive, but then on his way home he murders a randomly encountered pedophile, hides the body, and is so upset by it that he lies unconvincingly to everyone about what happened making them suspicious that he killed the girl. And so, predictably, he becomes the innocent victim of a revenge killing.
The sheer amount of random chance built into all these events was what made it unbelievable. I'm not saying such a thing would be impossible. But it's like reading the true story about the two elderly sisters in the South who lived over a hundred miles apart and died in a high-speed head-on collision with each other on a stretch of highway between where they lived.
Except that was established fact. This is a film, making it a lot harder to swallow.