Reviews by keiju

It´s not fancy to like this movie. It´s just another of those hard kick-in-your-face movies that proliferated in the Iron Age (also known as the nineties)... but better and harder than most. The worst part is that Gibson isn´t that hard and isn´t that bad but he has his good moments a charismatic smile and knows how to fake enduring pain.

Gibson was (is) more suited for the good boys. He is kind of goofy and even in his hard characters he looks like a choir boy in some moments... The best thing is that this is a light movie, has lots of funny moments and the violence is so boldly exaggerated that everything looks like a big bloddy joke... and the big clown has the biggest gun and the hardest punch. This is the kind of hard movie Gibson was intented to.

The good thing about the action movies from this era is that filmakers knew how to knit the action, the plot and the bidimensional simple characters in a strong, high tension knot where everything and everyone seems to be in place. This is a good example. The protagonist goes from down to the top of the criminal food chain meeting (meaning "kicking and shooting") lowlifes one after the other while he shows that he is a baaaaaaad man. Then all those lowlifes come back later in the movie for a second ration of bullets and pain and no one ever remembers that Gibson is the bad guy anymore: he walks with the girl and the bad guys suck it and die.

That is the way it was meant to be.

The worst? Lucy Liu. She gives very little to the movie, sucks as always. The last time you see her is one of her best moments... probably because she got slapped.

All in all this is a decent enough film from a time when popcorn-movies where fun and fast and there wasnt any need for armies of bad guys from here to the horizon or green nor blue screens anywere.

Just some guns, some bad guys and some exploding cars.
And a blonde.
And a dog.

The movie cover shows a skinny girl in a sexy dress... wait: are those handcuffs?
Yeah. This is a jail movie and most of all a great character study with great actresses. It´s hard, emotional and makes you grind your teeth and break a tear at the same time.

The movie cover is somewhat a lie: this is not a sensual movie, it´s a harsh and hard movie about a problematic and violent girl who also plays piano (a unsubtle way to remember people that no one can just be defined by one trait). You may hate or love the protagonist, you may understand her or not but you will empathize with her because the character feels true.

I loved it. I watched this movie with my girlfriend some years ago after renting it without knowing anything about it and we were really surprised. I loved it and she hated it, you will probably be in one of those two camps. I will never forget this movie but perhaps it´s because it surprised me so much.

First things first: Viola Davis is great here.

This is a melodramatic 2-steps-away-from-a-sunday-tv-movie film that takes an interesting topic and squeezes every last drop of emotion from it and then pours some more and happens to forget what was it all about. It gets the first wet-eyes moment in five minutes and strives to keep the moisture level up two hours straight. That objective they get for sure but they also let a could-be-a-great-movie slip between their fingers meanwhile. Its a women picture in the worst sense of its usage. Its about 60s white housewifes and ment for modern days white housewifes who just want to cry a while and feel well afterwards.
Also, Viola Davis is great here.

Everything I have said before isn´t a problem in itself, its a problem with my own expectations (my fault). What I´m going to say now IS a problem in itself. This movie tries to tell us too many stories and not all of them are that interesting or have talented actresses involved or are even narrated correctly. It feels too long, too crowded and too, yes too, catartic. The catarsis never seems to end. If you are the kind of person who always keeps crying fifteen minutes after the movie is finished, you are not going to be disappointed: this movie was conceived with you in mind!

This could had been a women picture in the best sense that there is but its just a decent, well marketed to the mad men women fans, absolutely politically correct, nice, way too long movie.

Also, Viola Davis is great here.
She really, really is.
She is the only one who brings some magic.

pretty arcade/action rpg with great voice acting and two endings to choose from. It´s fun and it´s cute and is brutal and has an original way of treating an old school genre

This movie tries hard to make an impact without any emotional strenght. It´s imaginery it´s not as impacting or brutal as it tries to be, the characters are just random cliches gone to the extremes and the acting is bland. I couldnt care less for the story or the main character drama.

It tries to trick you into thinking that you are watching something brutal and visceral but it´s not. I found it somewhat childlish the way it tries to go over frontiers and extremes that aren´t so.

Movies shouldnt be made to be cult movies they just should happen to be.

great character study, a hint of family coral-esque approach and a realism slash overemotionality paradox.
I´m glad I went to watch it but I must say that a lot of the people in the theater looked like if they slept through the film.