After sowing a tantalizing series of clues about how a young returnee from Iraq was murdered, and most of all WHY, the answer turns out as banal and commonplace as any homicide in an American inner city, only much less believable.
The main storyline ends in anticlimax. Various subplots simply are dead ends. Questions are raised which remain unanswered at the film's end. (If the "deadbeat ex" is not, who **is** the father of Ms.Theron's son, David?) Characters are often cliché figures-- the paunchy, middle-aged local detectives who harass the much younger, tough-yet-sensitive female cop played by Charlize Theron. She weeps uncontrollably for a murder victim but see how she can utter the phrase "blow job" just like one of the guys.
Ex college footballer Tommy Lee Jones seems to have lost a good deal of weight, most of it in the shoulders. He looks all head in some shots. Apart from that, his face is deeply lined, his skull nearly bald. The film is about his quest to learn the how and the why. He learns also that his soldier son returned from Iraq a substance abusing sadist.
The one enjoyable sequence--and all too brief it is--is the office scene between Charlize Theron and her boss, the youngish police chief played with sharp cynicism by JOSH BROLIN. We needed to see a lot more of him--the one local cop who knows exactly what's going on both on the street and in his own squad room--and who may well have enjoyed the favors of the winsome Ms. Theron as the other members of the detective squad charge.
The main storyline ends in anticlimax. Various subplots simply are dead ends. Questions are raised which remain unanswered at the film's end. (If the "deadbeat ex" is not, who **is** the father of Ms.Theron's son, David?) Characters are often cliché figures-- the paunchy, middle-aged local detectives who harass the much younger, tough-yet-sensitive female cop played by Charlize Theron. She weeps uncontrollably for a murder victim but see how she can utter the phrase "blow job" just like one of the guys.
Ex college footballer Tommy Lee Jones seems to have lost a good deal of weight, most of it in the shoulders. He looks all head in some shots. Apart from that, his face is deeply lined, his skull nearly bald. The film is about his quest to learn the how and the why. He learns also that his soldier son returned from Iraq a substance abusing sadist.
The one enjoyable sequence--and all too brief it is--is the office scene between Charlize Theron and her boss, the youngish police chief played with sharp cynicism by JOSH BROLIN. We needed to see a lot more of him--the one local cop who knows exactly what's going on both on the street and in his own squad room--and who may well have enjoyed the favors of the winsome Ms. Theron as the other members of the detective squad charge.