drpakmanrains
Really looked forward to this film, although newspaper reviews were lukewarm, since I have always liked courtroom type stories. (My father was a lawyer). And with actors like Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr., how bad could it be? Answer: Not bad, really, but still disappointing. First, it was soooo long, nearly two-and-a-half hours, while the story wasn't all that complicated. Second, the script was what I call overwritten, meaning that much of what was said was very complex and sounded contrived, yet spoken very quickly, so it made me feel that the actors were just reciting their lines, not speaking from the heart. I think Duvall was better than Downey overall, as I find his glib style, similar to his awkward moments in "Chef", to be annoying after awhile, even obnoxious. Plus it was fairly predictable, even though it took almost forever to get there.
simon-psykolog
To summon up its a drama where the prodigal son (Robert Downey) returns to his home town on the occasion that his mother has died. During the visit we very quickly sense, that something is wrong in his family, consisting of two brothers and a father. This setup is a perfect starting point to explore how thing can go wrong in a family and further ad some suspense in a clever way if the depiction of the distorted relations go hand in hand with the discovery of the historical incidents with explanatory power: almost like a detective story.Sadly, the choice has been to tell the story with one big overwhelming theme: our protagonist wants to get his fathers recognition no matter the cost. This need is in a filmic way never challenged but instead blindly accepted as a, sorry "the", way to find closure. If you humiliate yourself in doing so it apparently doesn't matter. When Robert Downey as last gets this recognition it felt so Hollywood that it left the movie in ruins. Regards Simon
