B-film Quality

Rating: 4/10 (22 May 2010)

In my defense, I was really expecting to like this film. It has, unfortunately, not aged well at all; every scene screams this to me. I'll agree, Pacino can do a mean accent, and I felt fine with his performance. The other actors, unfortunately, fell short. Also, some of the more violent scenes felt like they were forced into the film. It's no secret that the crowds dig unique ways of killing off characters. I have a feeling Stone thought one day, 'Hey, I bet chainsaws would be great,' or 'Hanging from helicopters sounds like the bomb!' and then found his chance to (clumsily) throw that into this film. It's also well known that they dig swearing, so f-bombs are thrown all over the place. Now, I know what you're thinking, and that's that I am offended by all of this. I'm perfectly content with graphic content if it works, but in this case, it just seemed to not fit. At last, to somehow make people think they were watching something more than an action flick, which this kinda is. But wait, how could we possibly end this story. Eureka, I've got it: go Nicholas Sparks on the script! Tony's last day is his worst, and then a skinny version of the terminator does what about fifteen hair metal rockers fail to do, which is sticking bullets in poor Tony's spine. He then makes a dramatic dive down to his fountain, where we meet a motif (which the crowds also dig) and then the film's over. At the end, I think I was supposed to feel sorry for Tony (I mean, the guy doesn't kill kids, so he's good, right?). Overall, the bad slightly outweighs the good (which techno scores are still cool, okay?!), and this ends up only being a mediocre film with all of the elements to draw in the crowds.