Don't get me wrong! I like Eastwood, I really do. He's a fine if limited actor and he's a solid handyman director whose movies often touch on interesting topics. There's just one teenie-weenie problem: many of his movies, both as actor and director, simply aren't very good. I think there's one main reason for his directorial failures: Most issues Eastwood chooses to build his films around need a director with a more intellectual, a more imaginative approach than he is able to achieve. He's a mainstream-thinker trying to do art-house cinema. Sometimes, he gets away with it through pure craftsmanship. But not in this instance.
This basically old-hat plot of the old curmudgeon mellowed by his adolescent Hmong neighbours into grandfatherly feelings and, of course(!), revenge and vigilantism is stock-full of amateurish acting, hoary plot machinations, lame culture-clash jokes and cardboard characters. Not to mention that solemn showdown.
Technically, the pic's well accomplished, but who cares after two long hours.
3 out of 10 geriatric action moves
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1205489/usercomments-535
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