Rating of
2/4
65%
CJP - wrote on 02/02/09
Action: 2/3 + Comedy: 1/2 + Love/Sex: 1/1 + Plot: 0.5/1 + Music: 1/1 + Good vs. Evil: 0.5/1 + Special Effects: 0.5/1 = 6.5/10 or 65%.
There are a variety of ways that things can happen when a main character is on the run. The most common being that he/she is a dominating bad-ass that can beat-up anything, or he/she will lay low while having a nervous breakdown about the people after him/her, or he/she assumes a completely new identity until the past catches up. Sean Penn's character is not nearly intelligent enough to pull any of these off well, but he tries every single one once. He also has a duffle bag filled with about $30,000.00 and is on his way to Vegas to try to double it.
Once he meets Jennifer Lopez's Grace everything goes to ruin and every small town stereo type you can think of comes out of the wood works. Some of them work, most notably the one note freaks played by Phoenix and Thorton, and we also get Stone's barrage of metaphorical flashes to try and spice things up. The result is an average outting of twists and turns and lies, which allows most of the cast to go completely over the top. Nolte summons the depths of scum for his inbreeding real estate mogul role, but even that goes typical after about 2 scenes.
