Cliché, world feels empty and Costner is wooden

Rating: 4/10 (20 October 2017)

Right from the start Costner annoyed me in the Role as Elliot. He seemed like a bland and boring good cop, and never really came through - what a boring little family he had.
The whole build up with the "lets gather a bunch of of misfits and throw them into action" was beautiful and entertaining for five minutes, then it just became obviously manipulative from a plot perspective.
Many of the scenes seemed weirdly empty, like something was wrong in the world building process. Not enough smoke, not enough rain and dirt, not enough people! Everything was very set-piecy which fit the overly clichéd cinematography though.
One of the things that annoyed me the most was the "folksy" - "good old timey whimey" lets a have big ol' shootout with music so overly dramatic and hollywoodesque your ears almost fell of. Also you grew increasingly tired with the weird mix of violence, and fun-for-the-whole-family atmosphere. Which leads me to the main problem: While Scarface and Carlitos Way had some kind of nihilistic and grotesque humor in the depiction of the coke era, and made no effort to make anything PG13, this movie didn't really seem sure of what it was doing. Everything seemed to clean cut, to polished and without nerve and humor. Which weirdly enough made this movie come of as being lot more sociopathic in its utilisation of violence. Because when violence is used in tandem with the Hollywood clichés the whole thing reeks of money grubbing producers and not willful directors.
Give me more nuance, more grit, or at least some warmth from unexpected characters. Scorcese did it better. Palmas other movies did it better.