I simply hate it when the marketing strategy adopted for any movie is based on comparing it to another one. That is usually a bad sign of what's to come. In one of the trailers I watched for this movie, the voice over guy (are they all the same person or do they just sound the same?) said "The best western since 'The Unforgiven' ", or something like that. My instincts told me not to watch it, but I thought to myself: "Well, there's Russel Crowe, Christian Bale, Peter Fonda. It just can't be that bad." I wasn't too psyched about the director, James Mangold. "Walk the Line" wasn't bad, but that's about the nicest thing I can say about it, so it's not hard to see it didn't do much for me.
I'm not gonna say my instincts were totally right, because the movie is not really bad. It's well done, Russel Crowe has once again done a very good job, and so has Christian Bale, as usual. But the story is just ... well, what's the word? Shallow. It's just sort of empty. The empathy between the two characters, which is supposed to account for the way things work out in the end, never really worked for me.
Anyway, to sum things up, it wasn't a total waste of time, but I could have definitely waited for this to be released in DVD. I give it 2 stars out of 5.
2 comments:
I don't like Crowe this much. For me, he's a good actor but very repetitive. Liked him at "A Beatiful Mind" and nothing more. Even at Gladiator he was so so....He keeps me out of the theaters.
Ouch, 2 out of 5! You've got tough standards. But I can respect discerning tastes. I'd love to see a list of your 5 out of 5 rated movies!
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