This was the most hackneyed piece of trash I've ever sat down to watch. Everything was predictable, from the car crash in the beginning to the supposedly exciting finish.
The opening of the movie was the best part. The viewer hasn't a clue why this man is being examined or why they are taking down all this trivial information. But then we move into a bar where an aging Clint Eastwood is sharing a cocktail with a twenty-something colleague of the opposite sex. She's very attractive, and I'm not sure how much they paid her for her short part, but being forced to swap spit with someone old enough to be her great grandfather should have made her eligible for hazardous duty pay. I'm sure there are a few aging baby boomers who still find Clint sexy, but that scene was done better in Scary Movie 4, and much more appropriate in a comedy.
Now who didn't see the car crash coming? A young lady has a few drinks, leaves the bar, the scene outside was heavy with fog and foreshadowing. Then we see her fiddling with the radio in pouring rain. We all know what's going to happen and thus the crash is absolutely gratuitous. Gratuitous and over the top: what could have taken less than a second seems to go on forever and ever as the tires screech and car spins again and again and again. Later we learn that she died on "Dead Man's Curve." Can you say "cliché?"
The clichés don't end there. In fact, they just don't end. Eastwood plays a recovering drunk, on the way out, hoping to reclaim his lost reputation. Everywhere he turns, he finds brick walls. The district attorney is a cliché: convinced that the person about to be executed is guilty. Eastwood's boss is a cliché: on his case, wants him gone, sure he's back on the bottle. Eastwood is the only one convinced that the convict is innocent and he's got just a few hours to save him. The stuff exciting endings are made of.
But then we see a flashback of the actual murder. The accused, played by Isaiah Washington, is in the store's bathroom, when the victim is shot. He runs out, drops to his knees, and panics. He calls for help and tries to give the girl mouth to mouth resuscitation, when in walks a customer wanting to make a phone call. He stands up and then suddenly remembers he's a cliché of a black man. We can almost hear his thoughts: "Oh geesus, I's be black. Dat white man gonna think I done killed dis white girl. Feet don't fail me now!" and he runs from the scene of the crime.
Good lord. Nobody, I repeat, NOBODY in the middle of a life or death crisis who is trying to save the life of another human being breaks out of that mode of thought to think about his own petty personal world. This was the bullcrap upon which this whole story turns? Well, at this point, they lost me entirely.
I jumped ahead to the exciting final moments with Eastwood driving his beater recklessly to the Governor's house with his "witness" in the car with him.
Just in the nick of time.
Finally, to fulfill the cliché ridden beginning and middle, we end with a Christmas cliché. Eastwood is out shopping, he exits the store, looks up, and sees the convict whose life he saved out shopping with his family. Yes, two perfect strangers brought together by coincidence, with one alive only because of the hard work and determination of the other, will always meet later during the season of joy. Believe me, I did not get the warm and fuzzies.
If I ever see this title listed in my television's guide, I will immediately say to myself: I'd rather be waterboarded.
The opening of the movie was the best part. The viewer hasn't a clue why this man is being examined or why they are taking down all this trivial information. But then we move into a bar where an aging Clint Eastwood is sharing a cocktail with a twenty-something colleague of the opposite sex. She's very attractive, and I'm not sure how much they paid her for her short part, but being forced to swap spit with someone old enough to be her great grandfather should have made her eligible for hazardous duty pay. I'm sure there are a few aging baby boomers who still find Clint sexy, but that scene was done better in Scary Movie 4, and much more appropriate in a comedy.
Now who didn't see the car crash coming? A young lady has a few drinks, leaves the bar, the scene outside was heavy with fog and foreshadowing. Then we see her fiddling with the radio in pouring rain. We all know what's going to happen and thus the crash is absolutely gratuitous. Gratuitous and over the top: what could have taken less than a second seems to go on forever and ever as the tires screech and car spins again and again and again. Later we learn that she died on "Dead Man's Curve." Can you say "cliché?"
The clichés don't end there. In fact, they just don't end. Eastwood plays a recovering drunk, on the way out, hoping to reclaim his lost reputation. Everywhere he turns, he finds brick walls. The district attorney is a cliché: convinced that the person about to be executed is guilty. Eastwood's boss is a cliché: on his case, wants him gone, sure he's back on the bottle. Eastwood is the only one convinced that the convict is innocent and he's got just a few hours to save him. The stuff exciting endings are made of.
But then we see a flashback of the actual murder. The accused, played by Isaiah Washington, is in the store's bathroom, when the victim is shot. He runs out, drops to his knees, and panics. He calls for help and tries to give the girl mouth to mouth resuscitation, when in walks a customer wanting to make a phone call. He stands up and then suddenly remembers he's a cliché of a black man. We can almost hear his thoughts: "Oh geesus, I's be black. Dat white man gonna think I done killed dis white girl. Feet don't fail me now!" and he runs from the scene of the crime.
Good lord. Nobody, I repeat, NOBODY in the middle of a life or death crisis who is trying to save the life of another human being breaks out of that mode of thought to think about his own petty personal world. This was the bullcrap upon which this whole story turns? Well, at this point, they lost me entirely.
I jumped ahead to the exciting final moments with Eastwood driving his beater recklessly to the Governor's house with his "witness" in the car with him.
Just in the nick of time.
Finally, to fulfill the cliché ridden beginning and middle, we end with a Christmas cliché. Eastwood is out shopping, he exits the store, looks up, and sees the convict whose life he saved out shopping with his family. Yes, two perfect strangers brought together by coincidence, with one alive only because of the hard work and determination of the other, will always meet later during the season of joy. Believe me, I did not get the warm and fuzzies.
If I ever see this title listed in my television's guide, I will immediately say to myself: I'd rather be waterboarded.