5/10
Never saw it way back when so I watched it last night. I'm a little surprised at its widespread acclaim, especially for the acting (personally I found both Penn and Robbins to be extremely hammy). I didn't find the story particularly interesting, and the point the movie was making was sinister but ultimately also a little silly. I guess for the personnel involved and the hype I expected a lot more than a kinda interesting detective story with a kinda goofy lesson at the end of it.
(Spoiler talk below)
The reason I didn't really like it because Sean Penn, in the movie, is essentially a gangster. Right? He went to prison, he was hanging out with bad dudes, he had killed people before, all that stuff. So the fact that he killed Tim Robbins' character...it was like, yeah, that's about what I would have expected him to do.
It would have been way more chilling to me if Penn's character was just a regular guy who suddenly lost his daughter to a senseless murder and then was torn between the dilemma of taking out immediate vengeance (but possibly on the wrong person), vs. waiting for the law to take its due course.
I thought the speech at the end by Penn's wife (about the strong doing what they have to do to survive no matter what) was kind of interesting and helped save the ending for me a little bit, but not much to raise the movie above a "meh" for me.
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