what a great movie. seriously, i was blown away by this one. Mel has taken a lot of heat lately and i think he's channeled all of that tension into a seething, subtle, authentically-human performance. i really feel it's the most impressive "mainstream" acting job i've seen all year. of course, nobody gives a shit cuz it's hip to hate Mel and the movie is getting largely panned by the critics. fuck them.
this is a terrific, mature film that combines political themes along with meditations on family and mortality in general. it's a pretty ambitious film and succeeds for the most part in achieving its goals. things get off to a somewhat slow start, so much so that i wondered if i had made a mistake shelling out my $6.75 (matinee of course) about 20 minutes into the proceedings. i mean, the beginning develops very slowly. but then i realized that, hey, this is what is called "character development", a concept somewhat foreign to the modern film-maker. you see, the idea is to actually establish a character as a real human being with real human vulnerabilities and complexities. i know, this is a strange concept in our current schizophrenic film-making world where the number of quick cuts in a scene usually outnumbers the actual words in the script. i get a migraine most of the time i visit the cineplex these days and that's probaby why i seldom go anymore. Michael Bay...fuck you and your horrible fucking TRANSFORMERS franchise. i wish illness upon you. okay, not really. but i hate you. you are part of the problem, pandering to what is clearly a foreign box-office when these things are green-lighted in h-town. or maybe it's just America. i mean, we are totally ADD, right? at least anyone under, say, 30 has the attention-span of a nanosecond.
anyway, back to Mel. he's great. tour-de-force great. his character evolves in shades of grey. it's wonderful to watch him become this shell of a man with nothing to lose but everything to believe in and therefore gain. his very existence and the core of his soul is defined by sudden loss. he finds himself caught up in an incredible conspiracy involving senators, corporate executives, average joes...all done with plausibility somehow. in fact, given our current state of far-reaching political and corporate corruption, it's pretty easy to see a story like this playing out routinely behind the scenes.
i won't even bother going into plot, mostly because (as you'll see moving forward) i don't talk plot. go read plot at imdb.com or Roger Ebert's site. i don't offer opinion on plot. i offer opinion on execution of plot. so Mel would fail miserably in selling this journey without a stellar supporting cast and that we get indeed. especially ray winstone. with one quarter the screen time of Mel, he delivers an equally complex and powerful performance as the anti-hero or greek chorus, whichever metaphor fits (i'm not good with metaphors).
anyway, i see no point in dragging out reviews. the movie is fucking good and if you don't think so you're an idiot or a liberal or both. fuck politics, you know this shit is going on right now with both Demoshats and Republicants right in the middle of it. we're fucked. might as well enjoy a really good drama.
Rating: 8.5/10
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