Reviews by johanlefourbe

When I first heard about this movie, I had actually some high hopes. Indeed, for the first time around in almost 20 years, Clint Eastwood was finally playing the lead for another director than himself so I thought that if he would make such a come-back, it would be only for something really interesting. Eventually, this movie didn’t make much waves when it was released but I still wanted to check it out anyway. Well, to be honest, the whole thing turned out to be rather disappointing. I mean, sure, Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams delivered some solid performance and it was still a decent watch but, at the end of the day, it was just a rather generic and predictable drama. Above all, what bothered me the most was how boring their relationship was. Seriously, the old gimmick of the old man who has a difficult relationship with his daughter and goes on a road trip with her and patch things up in the process has been done to death by now. Furthermore, it didn’t make much sense. Indeed, on one hand, it seemed that they had a close relationship but, then, you discover at some point that he gave her away very young and that she spent much of her youth without any contact with her father. On top of that, even though Mickey spent all her youth, her education and her career learning to be a top lawyer, almost managed in becoming a partner in her law firm and, yet, she still came to the conclusion that she didn’t care at all about the law after all. Seriously , it pretty much meant that she had wasted her whole life and this conclusion was just lame. Anyway, eventually, it was still not a bad movie but it’s too bad that, with such fine actors involved, they couldn’t come up with something more interesting.

Since I had heard some interesting things about this movie, I was quite eager to check it out. First of all, even though I had heard about Sarah Palin, I couldn’t really remember what happened with her 10 years ago so it was pretty neat to discover what exactly went down at the time.  Eventually, the whole thing turned out to be a fascinating look on a political campaign but also on how populism can seem so misguided and yet so popular at the same time. Indeed, even though, at first, it seemed that the bet done by Republicans paid off as Palin became hugely popular overnight, it became pretty obvious as well that she was not only pretty much ignorant but also seriously inadequate to run in the highest office. And, yet, even though she might have seemed like a terrible choice, especially after watching this movie, I still think that this gamble made sense.  Indeed, back then, Barack Obama was running such an impressive campaign, as a result, the Republicans had to make such a bold choice and, at the time, a safer candidate would have never worked. At least, Palin, with her appeal, allowed the Republicans to compete almost at the same level with Obama. Anyway, to conclude, it was probably one of the best movies I have seen dealing with politics and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in this subject. 

Since I kept hearing some pretty good things about this flick, I was quite eager to check it out. Eventually, even if not everything did work and even if it was nothing really original, it turned out to be such a disturbing movie, I don’t think I will soon forget it. Basically, this movie had 2 things that worked really well. First, they gave us  this very ominous atmosphere, especially during the opening scene which was quite spellbinding. Then, of course, you had Matthew [Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see]who was just starting to make one of the greatest come-back ever in motion picture history. I mean, sure, the guy gave a decent performance in ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ which was the official start of the  ‘McConaissance’ but he was just so much more impressive in this movie, he gave here the darkest but also easily one of the best performances of his career. Only a few years before , this actor was famous for playing some boring pretty boys  and, somehow, he actually kept the same formula here but gave this formula an extra dark edge which was quite fascinating.  Concerning the other characters, even though they were all some major losers and even though it was obvious from the start that their plan would be a major failure, they were still interesting.  Still, I had some hard time to swallow everything Chris did. The biggest problem I had with him was not really that he was a major f*ckup but the fact that he became seriously annoying as he kept hanging on his sister for no good reason. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of  its limitations, there was something quite fascinating about this really dark and disturbing thriller and I think it is definitely worth a look.