I'll cut to the chase: The writing just sucks.
It comes across like they put all the events surrounding the real-life story into a blender and sieved the narrative slurry perhaps to capture the action bits, plus some "family man" romantic bits, then arrayed the bits consecutively, handed that rubbish to DePalma, and then he did, uh, the best he could.
People who think this is a good movie *don't give a flip about story*. A parade of disconnected emoting, white-/black-hat posturing, and gun play will do.
I've seen much, much better treatment of the crime genre, so I have standards.
The few stars I give are for valiant efforts by the actors to breathe life into something lifeless, and (as I say) the side-effect reminder of the primacy of artistic values.
It comes across like they put all the events surrounding the real-life story into a blender and sieved the narrative slurry perhaps to capture the action bits, plus some "family man" romantic bits, then arrayed the bits consecutively, handed that rubbish to DePalma, and then he did, uh, the best he could.
People who think this is a good movie *don't give a flip about story*. A parade of disconnected emoting, white-/black-hat posturing, and gun play will do.
I've seen much, much better treatment of the crime genre, so I have standards.
The few stars I give are for valiant efforts by the actors to breathe life into something lifeless, and (as I say) the side-effect reminder of the primacy of artistic values.