An average movie

When I heard about this movie, I was thrilled. I mean, come on! A movie starring both Robert De Niro and Edward Norton, it really sounded awesome. But then, when it was released, it received a very lackluster reception so I became rather skeptical. Eventually, it was indeed pretty disappointing. A while back, De Niro and Norton (with Brando! that was an awesome cast) also did together 'The Score' and even though it was also a rather weak movie, at least, it was a fun watch. I wish I could say the same about this flick... I mean, it was not really bad, there was a promising start with a great confrontation between the 2 masters but the development was far from being satisfying. Basically, you have only 4 characters but none of them were properly developed. Above all, Frances Conroy had the most thankless job since she had barely anything to say and just looked really sad during the whole thing. Milla Jovovich had more to chew on with her character and gave honestly one of the best performances but, still, at the end of the movie, I wasn't sure what was going on with this woman. Robert De Niro gave also a solid performance, I mean, he always does even if the movie stinks but it was the same thing with Jovovich, you never got the opportunity to know him, to understand his predicament. Eventually, Norton was the biggest disappointment. His performance was not bad but it reminded me of 'American History X', one of the most overrated movies in my opinion. Indeed, pretty much in the same way, Norton starts really convincingly but, somehow, his character completely changes and the transformation was way too hard to swallow. Here, he started as a trash-talking convict, than became really depressed and finally ended up as some kind of mystical guy... Still, even though the whole thing was rather poorly written, I still can't really dismiss this flick. Indeed, the beginning was pretty strong and they were some good ideas out there, it's just too bad it didn't really work. To conclude, it is nothing really amazing but I still think it is worth a look though, especially if you are interested in the actors involved.

6/10