A lot of hype and a big hit, but in the end disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (20 April 2008)

I was happy to find copies of this flick on the video store shelves after all the hoopla about the movie, and I looked forward to seeing what all the brouhaha was about. After viewing it I have to register a negative opinion. From the start, the movie does indeed draw the viewer in to what seems to promise to be a pretty good - and very well made - action, adventure, mystery (&c &c &c) flick. We do, however, sense a dichotomy here. One part of the movie seems to want to be an action thriller, as the bad guy tracks the good guy and we all get enthralled with who will outsmart the other. I just wish they had followed this line through to a logical conclusion. The other half of the movie seems to be devoted to enshrining Tommy Lee Jones on Mt. Rushmore, and pursuing some sort of barren vision of the Old West, with dry, acerbic, minimalist dialogue that seems at odds with the advanced firepower of the two guys trying to kill each other. I like Tommy Lee Jones, but it seems sad that he is content to make movies where the producers know that his wizened visage and past filmic history will draw viewers, even if all he does is mutter (and I do mean mutter, in that a lot of his dialogue is unintelligible) formulaic bits of Old West wisdom. Robert Duvall does this sort of thing better and more intelligently.
There is also a major editing break towards the end of the film, where a lot of plot threads seemed to have wound up on the cutting room floor (e.g. the mother's death) and the viewer finds himself at a loss. Sheriff Bell's dry conversations, in the last part of the movie, with various hard-to-identify people do not, in the end, compensate for the great question the first half of the movie raised, i.e. "WHERE THE HELL DID THE 2 MIILLION GO?"
My last adventure in watching highly rated contemporary flicks, the overrated "Michael Clayton" led to the same disappointment. As an old fart, I'm going back to "Double Indemnity" and "White Heat."