Clint gets a free ride

Rating: 3/10 (26 September 2006)

I claim no more expertise in cinema than anybody else who has reviewed this movie but I am left with one overwhelming impression. Simply, nobody honestly criticizes Clint Eastwood. This is a mess of a movie and the fault lies entirely with the director. The acting is fine, the shots are fine, the writing is dull and uninspired but that's only the beginning of the problem. This is 10 movies in one trying to make some kind of impression. If plays like an incoherent and weak episode of Law and Order and culminates in an absolute pea-soup fog of cliché and absurdity. Why not explore intelligently one of the cardboard characters rather than the interaction between the entire woeful mess of them? Kevin Bacon's finger-pistol shot at Penn at the end of the movie was as concise a moment as Eastwood managed. A blank shot at nobody.