Watching this, without preconceptions, it struck me that there was something beautiful about this movie, though I couldn't figure it out. It was only afterwards that I realised it was the interaction between the three protagonists. It turns out, I found out afterwards, that these were not professional actors but the actual people replaying what they had done in real life. The interaction, indeed love, they showed towards each other on screen was real, not acted, and that is something no actor however great will ever be able to portray. I have a feeling that Clint Eastwood, the director, decided to go with the original rather than have professionals when he saw this. I don't know but I'm guessing this is the case.
So what we have here is not the usual Hollywood movie, which is a problem for some, but truly refreshing for me.
If this was a Hollywood movie you'd have three charismatic action hero types riffing of each other as the beat up the bad guys. You'd have a backstory that involved drugs and alcohol and all the usual stuff we've seen ad nauseum. You'd have half the movie about the terrorist and how he was driven to kill by the injustice of the West. Instead what you have here is three relatively normal guys, with all their flaws, which we all have, who in every way are as boring as you and me, but who unlike 99% of us when the call came, ran towards danger and not away from it.
I like the direction Clint Eastwood has taken in the last few years. He's in that enviable position where he doesn't have to care what the establishment thinks. He is a master movie maker who is now making movies about the small people, the ones that the establishment deplores. This movie, The Mule, Sully and the impending Richard Jewell speak to us normal people in a way no superhero or gangsta or Star Wars: The Prequel To The Sequel Part 54 that Hollywood is putting out ever will.
I've stopped going to the cinema in the last few years. But if more movies were like this, I might well go back.
So what we have here is not the usual Hollywood movie, which is a problem for some, but truly refreshing for me.
If this was a Hollywood movie you'd have three charismatic action hero types riffing of each other as the beat up the bad guys. You'd have a backstory that involved drugs and alcohol and all the usual stuff we've seen ad nauseum. You'd have half the movie about the terrorist and how he was driven to kill by the injustice of the West. Instead what you have here is three relatively normal guys, with all their flaws, which we all have, who in every way are as boring as you and me, but who unlike 99% of us when the call came, ran towards danger and not away from it.
I like the direction Clint Eastwood has taken in the last few years. He's in that enviable position where he doesn't have to care what the establishment thinks. He is a master movie maker who is now making movies about the small people, the ones that the establishment deplores. This movie, The Mule, Sully and the impending Richard Jewell speak to us normal people in a way no superhero or gangsta or Star Wars: The Prequel To The Sequel Part 54 that Hollywood is putting out ever will.
I've stopped going to the cinema in the last few years. But if more movies were like this, I might well go back.
