This is a paticularly frustrating film to watch. It's not a complete failure on the level of "Heaven's Gate", nor is it the focused, involving ex- ample of storytelling that "Unforgiven" is, either. It is three hours plus of filmmaking that more often than not fails to live up to its pedigree. No sin- gle level of the film is severely deficient -- the acting, directing, score, production design, costumes and editing are all well executed. The script has many memorable lines and moments, although they are fewer and further between than previous Kasdan efforts. Kasdan still has a strong eye for composition, and since "Unforgiven" seems to be the goal here, the pacing and character shadings seem appropriate. Randy Quaid comes out of this the best...his Doc Holliday is visually unsettling and flamboyant. Flamboyant enough, in fact, to seem somewhat out of place -- a sort of "Silverado" character in an "Unfor- given"-toned film. Still, he provides most of the film's best moments, al- though the supporting cast delivers their share as well. You can tell where you're supposed to be cheering, where you're supposed be tense, where you're supposed to emotionally peak and valley along with the protagonist. But you don't connect as well as you should, the result being a well-crafted but ultim- ately ineffectual. Not recommended.
- Jeff "Doh!" Pidgeon
--
- Jeff "When I'm Finished With You, They'll Be Stumbling Over YOU In The Dark" Pidgeon
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews