Kinematoscope

In Clint Eastwood's storied career of playing no-nonsense toughguys, and directing no-nonsense, serious films, not once has he touched upon the supernatural. It's been all western gunfights and gritty crime thrillers, alternating with Very Serious Oscar Type Movies.

Which is why Hereafter, three interwoven narratives about death and the afterlife, seemed like such a promising idea. Who wouldn't want to see Eastwood's steady hand (and Peter Morgan's lauded pen) brought to the quote unquote fantasy genre? Sure, the reviews are mixed, but watch the trailer below- it certainly seems like they're swinging for the fences with the premise.

The problem is, it's really more of a sac bunt than anything. Eastwood treats the profound questions involved with his usual straightforward frankness, but Hereafter doesn't offer any answers. It doesn't even speculate about them for too long, really.

Instead, it seems to find itself profound for raising them in the first place, even though pretty much everyone alive has asked them for pretty much all of history. It's as if Eastwood and Morgan (who's mostly written historical dramas about real things and people) had actually never seen anything involving psychics who can talk to the dead, near-death experiences, or ghosts, and thought they had truly original concepts that could do all the heavy lifting for them.



More...

Let's break it down. Matt Damon is a John Edward-type psychic who can speak to the dead, after briefly touching a bereaved loved one. Cécile de France is a French news anchor that has a near-death experience during a tsunami in Thailand and is moved to write a book about it. And Marcus is a young boy who's just lost his twin brother, Jason, and is all sad and stuff about it (amateurs Frankie and George McLaren play the twins, but we'll refer to them by character names since I don't know which plays which).

Eastwood apparently chose to cast amateur twin actors, and it pretty much shows, all the time, whenever they say anything. But Damon and de France are superb, and flourish as most good actors do under Eastwoods fast, hands-off direction. Bryce Dallas Howard shines in a supporting role despite some awful bangs as well.

And this film looks great- the opening, which follows de France through the tsunami, is breathtaking filmmaking, even if it was all CGI (no clue). Even the brief glimpses of the afterlife, which appears to be a bright white endlesses where everyone stands four feet apart in all directions for no reason, are tasteful and hazy.


It's just that Hereafter has nothing to say. The three plots converge in the end for brief moments of predictable frustration, and then the credits come up all at once. It's not really possible to get into this without spoilers, so...

SPOILERS! A FRICKIN' TSUNAMI OF THEM!

Here's Hereafter in a nutshell: during the film, Damon writes two letters. The first is a letter explaining to his brother (Jay Mohr) that he won't be helping him relaunch his profitable medium business because he can't take the bad juju (dreams, making people cry, etc) associated with his ability. The second is a letter he writes to de France after he touches her hand at a book signing, and sees not a dead loved one but a brief glimpse of her near-death tsunami. It's like three pages long and causes her to meet him in a cafe at the end of the film.

Got that? Now which letter do you suppose the film helpfully has Damon read to us via voiceover? You would hope its the second one, full of information about seeing the afterlife, the connection he feels to another important character, and the relief that he's found someone he can touch without being bugged by her dead loved ones, right?

Nope. It's the brief note to his brother, which we can easily guess says "sorry, can't do this anymore," because that's what he's been saying the WHOLE FILM. It even paraphrases the film's worst line, which is about how it's not a gift, it's a CURSE, to have this ability, boo hoo, etc.

De France reads the second letter and this real emotional music plays, like there must be some really profound stuff there, but not one clue do we get on that front.

The other main plot intersection, when little Marcus runs into Damon as well and pesters him until he does a reading, is done well enough, but offers nothing unexpected. Marcus feels sad, Damon tells him his brother says to be strong, and so on. Then Damon says Jason, the dead brother, has left. Where did he go? Marcus asks. Damon doesn't know. Even after all those readings, he doesn't know.

So that's it, then. Huh.

Eastwood's dramas sometimes have a procedural, obligatory feel, but it's easy to forgive in things like Changeling and Mystic River (a literal procedural) because they build to some intense, cathartic scenes. Hereafter builds to one scene (Damon and Marcus) that's shrug-worthy and one unread letter/brief cafe meeting- there is one weird vision (Damon's... I guess?) of the two of them kissing, but then the film literally ends on them shaking hands.

It takes away nearly all of the weight any earlier events seemed to hold. I enjoyed the subplot where Damon's gift ruins a budding relationship with Bryce Dallas Howard, his partner in a cooking class, and maybe if the film had been framed as some-sort of death-tinged romantic comedy or something the ending with de France would have been satisfying ("Who can find love with all these CRAZY GHOSTS flying around!? This fall catch Matt Damon in Paranormal Connectivity!").

PRETTY MUCH THE END OF ANY SPOILERS


There's a scene halfway through Hereafter wherein Marcus runs away from his foster parents (his mom's a junkie, much time is spent on this for no reason at all) and goes to a series of crackpots and wannabes to communicate with his dead brother. Even with another subplot (via de France's book) about how legitimate afterlife research is shunned and scoffed at, the film wants to smirk and roll its eyes at these poseurs and charlatans, too.

Too bad Hereafter is right there among them, distracting us with tsunamis and subway explosions to hide the fact that it's got nothing real to offer us.

Leftover Thoughts:

-Gotta say the marketing really failed on this one. Look at that poster up there- it's all blue with the freaky scifi lines and all. And the shadowy figure in the distance- definitely thought we'd spend more than a few seconds in the afterlife. The trailer, meanwhile, puts the tsunami two thirds of the way through, making it seem like an escalation of events rather than the trigger of one of the plot threads. It seems more like "Hey some people were curious about the afterlife AND THEN EVERYTHING BLEW UP AAAAH."

-Fun to see Bobby Baccala from The Sopranos stretching his range to play an Italian chef. Jay Mohr, meanwhile, is always a slick douchebag who wants to exploit people, in everything.

-Just so we're clear, I might have enjoyed Hereafter in spite of its lack of answers if it had not answered them in a more interesting way. It's just that it seemed to be purposefully building to de France and Damon and the little kid meeting, and then backed off when they all got in the same place and had no idea what to do. Once Damon decides to go meet de France there's a scene where he asks for her in the lobby of her hotel and she isn't there. What purpose is served by him having to leave the MacGuffin note and meet her two scenes later?

-I realized I haven't seen very many but my favorite film about the afterlife is still Wristcutters: A Love Story

Hey readers! Remember when we learned about how terrible it was to be in World War One? It turns out World War Two pretty much sucked as well. My question is, when the hell does war ever get fun? Is In The Army Now on this countdown?

No, no it isn't. This means we're faced with the grim reality of 2006's Letters From Iwo Jima, containing much more pathos and realism (and absolutely no Pauly Shore).

The Key Players:

Clint Eastwood becomes our first countdown threepeat! See #229 Mystic River and #213 Changeling for the skinny on the originator of the "Batman Voice."

Iris Yamashita wrote the screenplay, and shares a story credit with the inscrutable Paul Haggis, once again proving he belongs not in the director's chair, but behind the proverbial typewriter.

Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe, known to us uncouth Americans from The Last Samurai and Batman Begins, headlines a nearly all-Japanese cast that I know from nothing else. Co-star Kazunari Ninomiya is apparently a popstar/actor/radio host in Japan of Timberlakian proportion, notably.



Click for More...

The Story:

Letters tells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective- Eastwood's previous, much less lauded film Flags Of Our Fathers had just depicted the American side (though it focused as much on the famous flag-raising photograph and its effects as on the battle itself).

Eastwood, as much as he courts the moral grey area by depicting both sides of the same battle, still populates the film with effectually good guys and bad guys: our audience surrogates are General Kuribayashi (Watanabe), a forward-thinking general, former Olympic horse jumper Nishi, and Private Saigo (Ninomiya), who just wants to return home to his wife and child.

Those three stand in arms at many different moments with the traditionally uyielding, suicide-in-the-face-of-defeat officers Oshugi, Hayashi, Ito and Tarida.

Anyway, we follow Saigo as he digs trenches and tunnels preparing for the coming siege by U. S. troops, watching his comrades die from dysentery and missing his young wife and child. Kuribayashi laments the lack of support from the mainland- Iwo Jima is ultimately to receive no air, ground, or naval support, despite its prominence as a Pacific launching pad.

The enemy arrives, and the defenses at Mount Suribachi, with Saigo among them, are quickly overwhelmed despite the heavy losses dealt to American troops landing on the volcanic ash beaches. By radio, Kuribayashi orders remaining troops to retreat to the northern caves- the officers on hand, however, honor tradition instead of the general, and order all troops at Suribachi to commit suicide.

After a hoorifying scene in which Saigo watches all but one of his compatriots hold grenades to their chests as they explode, he convinces one other nervous soldier named Shimizu to retreat with him, claiming it is more honorable to continue fighting.

We follow them through a series of harrowing confrontations as they survive ill-fated charges ordered by bull-headed officers, leave behind a blinded-by-shrapnel Nishi (who then commits suicide), and finally near the north tunnels. Shimizu, Saigo's last friend, surrenders to the Americans in an effort to avoid a pointless death, but is carelessly shot by a GI that didn't want to stand guard duty (mirroring the earlier bayonetting of an American POW at the hands of the Japanese).

Finally Saigo and a handful of others reach Kuribayashi, and prepare to mount a last, doomed charge.

Throughout this entire narrative, we see Nishi, Kuribayashi, and Saigo write letters to their wives and children that will never be sent.

The Artistry:

I neglected to mention a modern day framing device in which said letters are discovered in the present, because it adds pretty much nothing other than some archaeologist-type dudes finding some letters. Oh, modern-day framing devices, will you ever go away?

Anyway, Letters From Iwo Jima is nearly our second black and white film in a row, except that its just nearly colorless- it's sort of washed out with grey, letting only the occasional orange explosion or red spatter of blood through the filter, and it certainly sets a bleak tone.

Eastwood, still making everything a western, pits our "fight to the death" cowboy type Japanese officers (Nishi even brings his horse with him) against the "die as soon as you fail at fighting" Japanese stalwarts, and its easy to read it as a condemnation of the quasi-religious Japanese fervor that stoked the war effort for so long.

That said, it's not as if Eastwood is stretching the facts: of 10,000 Japanese soldiers at Iwo Jima, only 216 were taken prisoner. It's just a little convenient that the two opponents of this seemingly irrational belief system, Nishi and Kuribayashi, both think fondly of time they spent in America. Nishi is also the one shown connecting with a wounded American captive, chatting with him about the States, while the other POW is violently stabbed to death.

Saigo is a more effective surrogate, since he just wants to go home, and he has a more universal soldiers tale of enlistment, disillusionment, and a sense of self-preservation above all. His journey may as well be that of a German soldier in All Quiet On The Western Front.

Though the entire story is told with Eastwood's typical one-take directness, it's a pretty stolidly paced two hours twenty minutes- it drags a little bit before the enemy arrives, but really drives home the length of the battle thereafter.

Cinematographer (and frequent Eastwood collaborator) Tom Stern is pretty seamless with the battle mise en scene- I noticed that the camera would be steady as we watched soldiers prepare to fire, and the shake as the guns went off, mirroring the recoil effect. Touches like those (and the Oscar-winning Sound Editing) really put you into the battle, something we sort of take for granted in a post-Saving Private Ryan world.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

Kuribayashi, having twice earlier saved Saigo from the wrath of other officers, saves him a third time by ordering him to stay behind and burn important intelligence while everyone else stages the final charge.

That charge, of course, goes disastrously, and Saigo emerges onto the beach to find a dying Kuribayashi, pulled away from the mayhem, and grants his last wish- to bury his body where "no one can find it." Kuribayashi shoots himself, in order to die while Iwo Jima is still technically Japanese soil.

Saigo is later taken captive by American troops, and the Battle of Iwo Jima finally ends.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should it be Higher or Lower?

The Verdict: Slightly Lower

Definitely a worthy war-movie, as restrained in its bleak and unflinching portrayal of a lost cause as All Quiet On The Western Front was over the top in the wake of the silent movie era.

I only wish that there were more of an effort to understand the culture that was in the last throes of war, rather than glorify the more modern-thinking characters. And I'm not asking for a complex voice-over digression, just perhaps characters that bridged that gap more effectively (to be fair, there was Lt. Okubo, who didn't mind the order to retreat, but shot a fellow soldier that wanted to surrender).

The Legacy:

One Oscar for sound, a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film (it wasn't eligible for the corresponding Oscar, which might be more correctly called "Best Foreign Production"- it requires a foreign director, and shooting location. Letters was filmed mostly in California and Eastwood is as American as they come).

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

The troubling scene in which people blow themselves up- I appreciated that this is presented without an excess of dramatic framing or heavy score. Just one by one.



Leftover Thoughts:

-I was pretty ready to be pissed if this stole the Oscar from The Departed at the 79th Oscars, but in retrospect it stacks up pretty well against that film. It was more of a spillover from Scorsese still not having an Award for directing at that point, and Million Dollar Baby over The Aviator the year before.

-I first saw this in an empty, very cold theater in January 2007, and I remember getting chills when characters were supposed to be sweltering in extreme heat. It was odd.

Coming Up...

Friday, September 18th: The Lost Weekend

Tuesday, September 22nd: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

Today we take a look at 2008's Changeling, "A true story" according to the screen right after the title appears. Join me as we find out how much "true story" credit we're willing to give a plot, how Clint Eastwood sort of thinks he's making a western all the time, and whether or not that kid is Angelina Jolie's son (obvious spoiler alert!- it totally isn't).

The Key Players:

This is our second entry with Clint Eastwood as director, but not our last- we'll get more glimpses of his bare-bones style in the director's with the Oscar winning Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven, and last year's Gran Torino.

Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski is most famous as the creator, showrunner and writer of the long-running "Babylon 5," but he's also a novelist and comic book author. Though he usually works in sci-fi, he researched the case of Christine Collins for an entire year after seeing an old court transcript.

Angelina Jolie, making her only countdown appearance (as of this writing), is of course the star of the Tomb Raider films, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Wanted. She won a Best Supporting Actress statue for Girl, Interrupted, and was nominated for leading actress for this film. She's also a frequent name in tabloids and such, and was of course in the modern classic of our times Hackers (shut up, that movie's awesome and you know it).

John Malkovich, also(?) making his only appearance in this project, is a storied actor and two-time Oscar nominee, with roles in projects like Dangerous Liasons, Empire Of The Sun, Of Mice And Men, and Being John Malkovich. He's also lately taken to producing artful teen comedies like Ghost World, Art School Confidential, Juno, and the upcoming Paper Towns (based on the excellent John Green YA Novel).

Rounding out the cast are Jeffrey Donovan (the spy-dude from "Burn Notice"!), recent Oscar nominee Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone, "The Office"), and veritable "Hey, It's That Guy!" Denis O'Hare.



Click for More...

The Story:

Single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) and her 9-year-old son Walter live a quiet, middle class existence in 1928 Los Angeles as we open. In short order, Christine is called into work unexpectedly, gets home late and finds Walter missing. She phones the police, who tell a shocked Christine that procedure is to wait 24 hours, since there are so many runaways that just come right back. The next day, they take her information, but can do little to find Walter, with nothing unusual reported in the neighborhood.

Months go by, and one day, a police captain (Donovan) visits Christine at work, to her trepidation. But it's good news- Walter is alive, says the cop, found in DeKalb, IL in the company of a drifter. When she goes to the train station, amidst a drum of reporters rounded up by the LAPD (happy to publicize doing something right during a time of constant accusations of corruption), she stops short- that isn't walter.

The captain assures her it is, that the boy's just changed during his ordeal- and "Walter" knows his name and home address. Somewhat mollified, Christine smiles unsteadily for the cameras and takes the boy home.

Soon she discovers that not only is this boy circumcized (Walter wasn't), but three inches shorter than her son. She goes to the police captain, who gets belligerent and shoos her out of the station. He sends a doctor the next day, who tries to convince Christine that severe shocks to the system can somehow cause a three inch shrinking (and as for the circumcision, well who knows what these derlict types may do to a child). After an article is published in the paper ridiculing her concerns, Christine goes on the offensive, getting written statements from Walter's dentist and teacher claiming this boy (who she's still been caring for) is not her son, and announcing her intention to file a civil suit to the press, with the help of a Presbyterian minister (Malkovich), who has made it a crusade to expose corruption and wrongdoing in the LAPD.

Of course, eager to avoid admitting any mistakes, the police captain has Christine involuntarily commited to a psych ward under "Code 12," which indicates a police request. The ward's resident Jack Nicholson type, a prostitute named Carol (Ryan), befriends Christine and points out all of the other "Code 12" women with little hope of getting out. As the minister tries to discover where she's gone, Christine tries to cope with an electro-shock happy doctr (O'Hare) and not lose hope...

The Artistry:

Changeling is a tense movie. As the trailer sort of blows the whole "not my son" angle, and the involuntary commitment, the entire beginning of the film is a slow buildup to things we know are coming. And the eventual revelations later are dosed out quickly, after long stretches of tensions. Eastwood paces his plot like a series of gunfights in a Western, I think- he's used to movies where the outcome can change in an instant, and the big finish of Changeling is frought with a constant interplay between one result and another (more on this in a second).

Jolie does an admirable job from scene to scene, making the transitions from histronics to insistence stubborness when needed. It's a subtle transformation- there's a little of the standard "fighting the good fight" when she's in the ward, but the rest of the movie she doesn't so much do the brave thing (i. e. taking on the entire LAPD) because she wants to, she does it because it's the only way to find her son. The rest of the cast mostly have time to hit the single notes their characters call for- Malkovich the helping hand, Ryan the mentor, Donovan the villain.

The gender polotics of this movie are an astounding example of what we were once capable of- as Jolie says in the extras, it's something you'd have trouble following along with if it dindn't happen in real life. Only eight years after it became illegal to deny women the vote, it was an easy job to railroad a single woman for an organization like the LAPD, and standards for involuntary commitment were frighteningly lax.

When the inevitable turnaround comes, it makes it all that much more satisfying. Changeling wasn't something I would've gone out and watched myself, but it's compelling in a much more personal way than I expected. It's a story, not a message movie, because the message in something this extremely backward and wrong just boils down to "What the f*ck!" the more you think about it.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

While the minister starts setting things in motion to get Christine released, the news breaks that Walter was among the boys spotted at a ranch in Wineville, CA, where a man named Dennis Northcutt is now accused of kidnapping, molesting and killing up to twenty children.

This lends plenty of credence to Christine's now-publicized claims that she was given the wrong child, and public opinion turns decidedly in her favor as she is released and the LAPD picketed by protestors.

After the proceeding trials, which are neatly intercut, Northcutt is sentenced to hang after two years' imprisonment (though not for Walter's murder specifically, as his remains are not identified),the police captain resigns, the police chief is demoted, and the mayor declines to run again. Christine holds out hope for Walter, and still calls missing person departments across the country for news.

Two years go by, and Northcutt sends for Christine, claiming he wants to tell her the truth about her son to assuage his conscience. She goes, but Northcutt panics at the sight of her and stammers that he "can't lie" to her because it would be a sin- he doesn't admit to killing Walter, and Christine watches him hang (in a tense, drawn out to infinity scene) the next day.

Three years after that, a boy is found, and after a brief moment in which we don't know which boy it is, it turns out not to be Walter, but a boy who was confined at the ranch with him. He, Walter, and two other boys had made an escape attempt, and the boy had laid low for years for fear of reprisal or punishment. In his story he mentions that Walter came back to help him during the escape attempt, saving his life, but the fate of the other boys is unknown.

Christine tells the officer that broke the case five years before (the one good cop in the film) that she now has hope for Walter for the first time in years, and we end.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

I'm actually pretty happy with it right here, on the fringes of the top 200- it probably could be higher without the manipulative ending (the least true-to-life part, as Christine Collins never visited Northcutt in prison and wouldn't have watched the hanging).

The Legacy:

Beyond the three Oscar (and nine BAFTA) nominations, it really hasn't been that long. It's yet to be seen what this will do for Jolie's career as a "serious" actress- her only upcoming project is the action movie Salt (and maybe Wanted 2 what?).

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Actually very slim pickings on there, but there are a few interviews with Jolie and Eastwood that lay out the context a little bit:



Leftover Thoughts:

-Odd moment when Malkovich is describing the LAPD's corruption to Jolie and we see it depicted in flashbacks for some reason. We don't need that much proof, Eastwood. Whose perspective are we following here?

-Actual Tagline for this film: To Find Her Son, She Did What No One Else Dared. Does that not imply that she definitely finds her son?

-Donovan rocks a nice Irish accent in this film (much like in the recent season finale of "Burn Notice"). Real weird to see him as a villain, though.

-Differences between real life and film (Spoilers): Northcutt's mother actually was implicated in helping her son with his crimes, and at one point confessed to killing Walter Collins, recanting it later. Interesting that this was left out of the film- perhaps it clashed a little violent with Jolie's interpretation of the bonds of motherhood (end spoilers).

Whatup folks? Considering moving east? If so, Dennis Lehane would like you to keep in mind that Boston is where happiness goes to die. Or at least, in the two movies I’ve seen adapted from his work, Gone Baby Gone and today’s subject Mystic River, it’s certainly a dreary, downtrodden place of petty crime and broken hopes. But hey, both films are pretty good.

2003's Mystic River is a film I was ready to kill with a shovel if it took Best Picture from The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King. Fortunately that wasn't necessary. But will a mystery stand up to a second viewing?

Click here for More...

The Key Players:

Clint Eastwood (famous for being Clint Eastwood and stuff) directs, without appearing in front of the camera, working with an adapted screenplay by Brian Helgeland (screenwriter of everything from A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 to L. A. Confidential).

What made this movie shine come awards-time was a superb cast: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon are supported by the likes of Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, Lawrence Fishburne, and Emmy Rossum.



The Story:

Penn, Robbins, and Bacon play three childhood friends who were caught writing their names in cement by two men who appeared to be cops. They made the young Robbins get in the car, and held him in a basement for four days (of extreme unpleasantness) before he escaped.

Flash-forward to the present day, and Robbins has grown into a fragile, nervous man, but with a wife (Harden) and son. Penn is a reformed criminal that owns a convenience store, with a wife (Linney) and three daughters (one of whom is Rossum). Bacon became a state cop, and has an estranged wife that he hasn’t talked to in six months.

Got all that? Good. Now, Penn’s daughter (Rossum) goes missing and is found murdered the next morning, the same night that Robbins comes home at three AM with someone’s blood all over him. He tells his wife a story about assaulting a mugger, but she’s suspicious.

Bacon and partner Fishburne are assigned the case (since she was found in a public park, I think), and he has the unpleasant task of dealing with Penn’s hotheaded, prison-tough grief and investigating Robbins for the crime. Problem is, Penn has a network of former associates that are more than willing to take the law into their own hands…

The Artisticness:

Apparently Boston also has a lot of bright, blue light, as nearly every shot in Mystic River ups the natural contrast to some degree. Lots of whiteouts accompany plaintive shots of tree leaves in the sunlight and pans up to the sky. Along with Clint Eastwood’s plaintive score (he’s a jack of all trades), it’s very clear that we’re watching a serious film. Seriously.

I haven’t read the book, but the plot unfolds at a pretty brisk pace in the early going- it’s only fifteen minutes before we’re through the childhood flashbacks, meeting all three as adults, and the night in question before it slows down for more character drama. I counted, and Sean Penn has at least five different “For Your Consideration” scenes to earn his first Best Actor statue, kicking off with the big “IS THAT MY DAUGHTER IN THERE?!” from the trailer.

I gotta say, the nature of the whodunit is much less compelling the second time through, which is not always a huge deal, but still.. more on this in a second. As two Oscars (Penn and Robbins) and another nomination (Harden) prove, Eastwood knows how to get the most from his cast, or maybe how to let them do their own thing. Laura Linney even throws in a highlight-reel scene at the very end after a mostly quiet role.

Sometimes Robbins internal pain can manifest itself with metaphors of wolves and vampires that sounds a little hammy in dialogue, but beyond that my only problems with the film are sort-of structural…

THE ENDING! WICKED SPOILERS!

Harden takes her suspicions to Penn, he takes Robbins out to the docks to kill him (we find out that he’s had no trouble killing in the past). First he forces Robbins to admit to the crime, promising to be merciful. Then he stabs him. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Bacon apprehends the actual killer, the daughter’s boyfriend’s little brother (he’s mute, he has issues), and we discover that Robbins actually killed a pedophile he saw with a child prostitute. Penn is forced to live with having killed the wrong man, Bacon knows about it but can’t begin to prove anything, and Harden is left out in the cold, essentially.

I gotta say, the first time I saw this, I didn’t tax myself to try and second guess things (nor was I familiar with Lehane’s super-twisty style), so I didn’t see all that coming, and it was a punch to the gut. Watching it again…yes the twists are hinted at enough, but it’s actually kind of aggravating how manipulative the movie needs to be to accomplish it.

Let me explain- one of my least favorite things in “serious dramas” is when events need to happen so specifically wrong at just the right time, in just the wrong way to affect a tragic outcome. You can’t use the hand of plot devices to cause fifteen different implausible things to happen at once and then step back at the end and say “that’s life!” (Prime examples of this phenomenon that grate me more every time I see them: American Beauty, The House Of Sand And Fog, and Crash).

So seeing the number of times they needed to protract the police investigation to miss Penn’s decision by a few hours, or the number of times Robbins had to intentionally keep silent about what he really had been doing… ugh. Spare me.

The worst is when the police call Robbins in for questioning a second time, armed with evidence of blood in the trunk of his car. After being essentially a nervous wreck for the entire film, he’s all of a sudden a steely-eyed operator, and proceeds to talk his way out of jail (in time to get killed) because he knows about loopholes in the obtaining of evidence. Please.

END SPOILERS



Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Well, if you read the spoiler section, you can tell I’m not so high on this one. I’m tempted to say I liked Gone Baby Gone better, but that had a solid plot with some weak spots in the cast for me (namely a useless Michelle Monaghan and a there-for-the-paycheck Morgan Freeman).

The Legacy:

Well, it got the two Oscars, as mentioned, and plenty of other circuit honors that year, and it’s part of a very consistent late-career dominance by Eastwood. So it’ll be remembered.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube

Sean Penn Oscar clip number 2: him trying to put up with his “old school” father in law on the day of the funeral before nearly flipping out on him. Hard to believe the guy’s only got the one statue.



Leftover Thoughts:

• Penn became a criminal and Bacon a cop, because those are the only two occupations available to young men in the Boston area. Watch The Departed.
• I would enjoying a lot of movies a lot more if I could get my brain to stop asking questions. It’s odd, because I never go to other types of films and ask “why can these hedgehogs talk to begin with?”