An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a nice cast involved, I was quite eager to check it out. On top of that, I was really intriguing to see Guillaume Canet delivering his first English-speaking feature as a director. Well, it turned out to be a really ambitious project featuring an impressive cast (Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts, James Caan, Lili Taylor) and, on paper, it did sound like a pretty neat gritty 70’s crime drama. Well, unfortunately, even though the damned thing definitely had some potential, it turned out to be rather disappointing. In my opinion, it seems that even though Canet had the best intentions, the project was just too ambitious, I’m afraid. Above all, there were just too many characters involved. Seriously, what was the point to have such a neat cast if they all ended up playing some rather poorly developed characters? As a result, there were also a bunch of sub-plots which all turned out to be half-baked. Eventually, I think they should have focused more on the two brothers and drop at least half of the characters. At least, the whole thing looked really nice and there was a cool soundtrack so the mood was fine but I couldn’t help thinking that Canet spent the majority of his time and energy to make sure the whole thing looked period accurate when he should have put more attention on the story and the characters involved. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really work, it was still a decent watch though and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.