almost great, blows at the end

Rating: 6/10 (18 January 2005)

the movie should have stopped right after Kevin Bacon tells Sean Penn he killed his childhood friend for no good reason. That should have been it, walk away. Another guy in the audience started scream, "no, please god no, don't let this movie go on" The tragedy embedded at the core of the movie would have been complete. What follows is of a completely different, unsupportable and cheesy tone and Laura Linley, a wonderful actress, is forced to embarrasses herself. Tim Robbins was really great here, as was Marcia gay Hardin, the movie actually was good for most of its length. Unfortunately, the lack of a good ending is significant, weird how Eastwood sometimes gets it just right, "a perfect world" or "unforgiven" for example, and then not, I guess art is hard.