Could have been SO much better...

Rating: 2/10 (17 June 2004)

MAJOR SPOILERS - READ ONLY IF YOU HAVE SEEN THE FILM
This was definitely a movie filled with squandered potential. The first hour or so was brutally slow; and once the film actually gets moving, it leads absolutely nowhere! The "explanation" for why the kids murdered Jimmy's daughter makes no sense. "They were worried that she would tell on them for playing with a gun" ???????Puh-leeze!!!Oh yeah, that totally explains why they bludgeoned her with a hockey stick, and then shot her AGAIN......Whatever. And lets not leave out how Sean (a cop) lets Jimmy just walk away after he realizes that he has murdered their childhood friend.....Oh sure.....makes perfect sense to me! In addition to all the above, the final 10 minutes or so were completely pointless. This worst thing of all about this movie is that it could have been great.

2 Final comments: 1)The fact that Sean Penn won Best Actor for this, while Tom Cruise wasn't even nominated for 'The Last Samurai' is a joke. 2)Has anyone else noticed that the reviews are split fairly evenly between good and bad, and yet the average rating is 8.1??? Just wondering how that happened.