text: This movie features two of my favorite actors in Kilmer and Downey. It also boasts the always enjoyable Larry Miller in a too-small part. Despite this I found it to be nearly unwatchable. Michelle Monaghan may be pretty but she is nearly charisma free and the reasons for Downey's character's obsession with her character is not at all understandable in terms of the information the film presents or the way it's portrayed. The ending seems pretentious and though the intention seems to be that the audience should join in the nod and wink the film, having failed to bring us in on the side of its protagonists leaves us unwilling or unable to do so.<br /><br />Fans of the film say that those who disagree simply "don't get it". I don't think this is so. The plot was not complicated or beyond understanding. It was simply uninvolving and clumsily and obviously manufactured. I "got it". I just didn't like it. Paddy Breathnach's "I Went Down" and Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" are much better realized examples of the kind of film-making that director Shane Black fails to achieve.<br /><br />I share a birthday with Shane Black but a look at his credits (mostly as a screenwriter)makes me want to dissociate myself from any other connection.