Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

robbotnik2000 This could have been shortened up into a movie with more punch, but seems to lope along nicely. Christian Bale and Casey Affleck are brothers, Bale has a man's-man job at a miniscule steel works company that seems to be put together with ticky-tacky and functioning at a scale so small one can only believe it turns out the metal fixin's for matchbox cars and toy pianos. Casey is a sometime military dude who re-ups or is re-upped to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. He tries to make money by doing anything like standing around waiting for the right numbers to drop. Or fist fighting. The story hangs together barely. Casey's character fights in what are for him fixed fights and he usually takes the dive. But although he does this more than once, he really hates to take dives. And yet his handler, a battered looking Willem Dafoe keeps using him, including in a fight co-managed by a convincingly dangerous looking Woody Harrelson. It is hard to believe that real people behave so stupidly that you want to shout at the screen, but in fact people do behave pretty stupid, so it is believable in real life, only this isn't real life this is a movie which has to be believable. I got the impression that this movie was a precursor to Manchester by the Sea which it preceded in release by 3 years, but the Casey Affleck character is the same character, a skinny man's man with major interior issues which cause him to experience major depression yet express himself violently. His movements, and that of older brother Christian Bale are played out in this long, predictable revenge story. Other characters were played by the comely Zoe Saldana and the grim, somewhat blocky appearance of Forest Whittaker. Good to see, but not really pivotal to the plot, such as it was. I don't know if the town of Braddock is real or what State it is in, but I enjoyed the industrial ruin of a small town atmospherics. Reminiscent of places I'm from that haunt me. The music was unremarkable. The story played out predictably right to the end.

Mihai Toma Russell, an average guy, working at a steel mill in a remote village, gets arrested for causing an accident. In the meantime, his girlfriend dumps him and his brother, Rodney, gets involved in some nasty fights, not willing to work like a normal person.As you would expect, Rodney's "business" doesn't go as it was hoped, he gets involved with the wrong guy and gets murdered. As the police must follow procedure, thus taking a very long and agonizing time, Russell decides he must do something about it. But don't imagine here that he will go and beat the bad guy up, or shoot him, or something...nooo, he wastes his time waiting for the police until the movie is close to the end, makes a phone call, lures him in his village, takes revenge and the end. As simple as that. What a movie! It has two hours, one wasted on boring and mundane events, half of the other brings some drama, but not too much because it might hurt somebody, while the last part tries to make up for the lack of interest and excitement the movie inspired until that point by providing the much lusted revenge.To say this movie was a waste of time would simply be a compliment for it. Besides the fact that is as boring as it can be, it also features two big stupid and disappointing sequences, on which the movie bases, which make you scratch your head, to say the least. The only positive aspect about this movie is, as usual, the actors, who do their part very well. If it wasn't for them, I would have closed the TV after at most half an hour.

momosity It was definitely a waste of 2 hours but I couldn't sleep so what the heck, I watched it. I feel badly for people who spent money to see this dreck. At least on cable there are subtitles so I could read what the actors were mumbling!I'd ask how so many good actors could make such a boring movie, but unfortunately these days that's becoming more common.

Robert J. Maxwell One of the Baze brothers, Christian Bale, is sent to prison for his involvement in a fatal traffic accident. His beautiful girl friend, Zoe Saldana, an impressive actress, hooks up during his absence with the well-meaning local police chief, Forest Whitaker, so she's lost to him. Moral: If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt.His younger brother, Casey Affleck, joins the army and is sent to the Middle East. He returns shattered by his experiences in combat and is searching for some way out of the battered old industrial town of Braddok, Pennsylvania. Affleck chooses bare knuckle fights in remote places where the rules, if they exist at all, resemble those of cage fighters. People bet on one or the other and make or lose money. I don't believe there are such underground fights, any more than I believed that ex soldiers would play Russian roulette for money in "The Deer Hunter," which this film in some ways resembles. But let it go.The small town fist fights in Braddock are for nickels and dimes. It's up in the Ramapo Mountains of New Jersey, a five hour drive, that the real money is to be made and that's where Affleck wants to go. His de facto manager, Willem Dafoe, does what he can to discourage him. The network up there is run by the brutal Woody Harrelson, looking just fine as the most soft-spoken and menacing looking villain you can imagine. Affleck insists. Both he and Dafoe pay the price of riding on the wild side.This activates the glands governing the revenge motive in his brother Christian Bale. The two brothers shared the same house in Braddock but while Bale joined the community and attempted to make up for his traffic accident and shed his ex-con identity, Affleck was always restless. Whitaker the cop is doing what he can to assist the Jersey police but how much can he do from shabby Braddock? Bale apparently cooperates with the New Jersey police in a raid on Harrelson's den of iniquity but, surprise! Although we see Harrelson shooting up and whooping in his crack high and the police bust through the door, rifles raised, shouting "Police!", it turns out that the cross-cutting was deceitful because the cops were raiding an empty house. Harrelson was in another dump somewhere, straight out of "Silence of the Lambs." Well, what is there left for Bale to do except to lure Harrelson down to Braddock -- easy enough because somebody in Braddock owes him a great deal of money -- and take care of the situation himself by killing Harrelson himself, even while Whitaker shouts from a distance, "Don't do it. Drop your weapon!" He doesn't just shoot Harrelson dead. They have a ferocious fist fight first, one in which Harrelson despite being bashed over the head with a rifle butt, manages to pin Bale down and injure him by bopping foreheads. I hate that cliché because it violates Newton's third law. It should damage both foreheads equally.But Bale winds up on his feet, rifled aimed at the now supine Harrelson, and deliberately shoots him through either the upper thigh or the genitals with that hunting rifle. Harrelson howls with pain, climbs to his feet and stumbles away. Bale lets him get about 50 feet away before putting another bullet through his kidney. Harrelson, all bloody and lurching like a drunk, walks away into a grassy field, probably dying. This is the point at which Whitacker arrives and tries to dissuade Bale from finishing the job. No dice. At about 100 yards, Bale puts a third bullet through Harrelson's back. The victim staggers forward for a few seconds before dropping on his belly, spitting blood. Bale squats next to the dying man, whom he's never met, and asks, "Do you know who I am? I'm Rodney Baze's brother." Exit Harrelson.Let me get socially scientific for a moment. It's an occupational disease. The ending isn't really satisfying. Bale, who has been a nice guy throughout the film, the kind of guy so ridden with guilt that he places a bouquet at the site of his traffic accident to commemorate his victims, becomes a wily and deliberate murderer because, I guess, blood is thicker than the Criminal Penal Code or something.In sociology, the family is a primary institution, meaning it's the one you interact with on a daily basis and owe allegiance to. Cops are secondary institutions, like hospitals, banks, or DMV offices. They're at a remove from the family and in developed countries, secondary institutions have assumed many of the responsibilities of primary institutions, although how much they should interfere in family life is a matter of debate. That's why cops find "domestic disputes" so tricky and troublesome. That's why some of us want families to pay for their own health care out of their own pockets.In this film, Bale throws off the valid authority of Whitaker, representing the secondary institution of the police force, and devolves into a murderer prompted by blood allegiances, while the police could manage the situation with authority and no fuss. He's gone back to the rude values of the Hatfields and McCoys. Of course we all glow with satisfaction as the demonic Harrelson gets his just due, but it's not Bale's job to bring that about. Now Bale is a deliberate murderer, regardless of motive, and can expect to revisit the slams and have a long, long time to do penance.Nice photography in and around Braddock, a steel town that is now largely black and has become dilapidated after the collapse of the steel industry. In 2000, the per capita income was $13,135. That's pretty damned low, almost as low as mine.