A good movie

Since I’m a huge fan of Sean Penn and since this movie was very well received, I had some pretty huge expectations about it. Unfortunately, to be honest, I thought it was slightly disappointing. I mean, it was pretty good, that’s for sure, but somehow, I was expecting more from it. First of all, Sean Penn was just brilliant. He is definitely one of my favorite actors and he did a great job in this movie, as usual. And that might have been the issue here. Indeed, except for Penn’s awesome performance, this movie didn’t have much to offer in my opinion. Take for example Naomi Watts. Eventually, she will make 2 more movies with Sean Penn (see also ’21 grams’ and ‘Fair Game’) but this time, she didn’t have much to do, just like Don Cheadle. Furthermore, the issue with such stories is that you know beforehand how it will end and in this case, it was pretty much like watching a train wreck for 90 minutes which was not particularly rewarding. What remains eventually is one hell of one man show by Sean Penn who manages to make his character really compelling to watch even though the guy was pretty much a messed up loser. To conclude, even though it wasn’t really as good as I was hoping for, it was still a pretty good drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

7/10