The one person in the crew of GOODLAND who unequivocally did his job and did it spectacularly was the director of photography. The opening of GOODLAND is a collection of landscape set shots of the billiard-table-flat surrounds of Goodland, Kansas and, as an erstwhile photographer, I found these opening shots breathtaking in their compositional choices. I'd like to have a coffee table book with those pictures, and others like them, in it. I thought, hoo boy, this is gonna be a great movie.
Turns out not.
If you don't want to watch the whole movie at least take a look at these opening shots. They're worth it.
One of the other user reviewers around here described GOODLAND as "Fargo, Kansas", and that's spot on. The parallels between FARGO and GOODLAND are far too overt to overlook. They're both murder mysteries set in small town America being investigated by a ranking female policewoman with a lot of representation of local color and life.
But where FARGO artfully captures the colloquial cadence of life and language in North Dakota, GOODLAND makes the people of Goodland, Kansas a bit slow and monotonous. The townsfolk depicted in GOODLAND look exactly like what they are: actors trying to capture the feeling of local yokels but instead coming across as wooden and unbelievable because of the poor job they're doing capturing Kansas patina.
Illustrating this point, there's a scene in GOODLAND involving a pathologist; what's interesting about it is that it's a scene where, inadvertently I guess, a clearly experienced and polished actor is in the scene along with the cardboard cutout actors typical of GOODLAND, and the stark contrast is a little jarring.
I rather guess that what is supposed to make movies like GOODLAND impactful is the way that they represent small town, middle America in a rather brutal and gritty way in purposeful inversion to the more traditional, warm and inviting Norman Rockwell depiction us oldsters grew up with. While I may be a bit paranoid, it's hard to avoid the feeling that there is some sort of political/cultural statement in there somewhere, which is more than a little annoying.
In short, as pointed out by others, if you have seen FARGO then you generally know what to expect thematically of GOODLAND, only not as well done. Additionally, I found the ending to be needlessly brutal, dissatisfying, and a pointless slap in the face to most of the rest of what had transpired in the movie; whoops... It's time to wrap this up. Let's kill everybody, good guy included, in a sad and pointless way and turn off the cameras. We're done.
Turns out not.
If you don't want to watch the whole movie at least take a look at these opening shots. They're worth it.
One of the other user reviewers around here described GOODLAND as "Fargo, Kansas", and that's spot on. The parallels between FARGO and GOODLAND are far too overt to overlook. They're both murder mysteries set in small town America being investigated by a ranking female policewoman with a lot of representation of local color and life.
But where FARGO artfully captures the colloquial cadence of life and language in North Dakota, GOODLAND makes the people of Goodland, Kansas a bit slow and monotonous. The townsfolk depicted in GOODLAND look exactly like what they are: actors trying to capture the feeling of local yokels but instead coming across as wooden and unbelievable because of the poor job they're doing capturing Kansas patina.
Illustrating this point, there's a scene in GOODLAND involving a pathologist; what's interesting about it is that it's a scene where, inadvertently I guess, a clearly experienced and polished actor is in the scene along with the cardboard cutout actors typical of GOODLAND, and the stark contrast is a little jarring.
I rather guess that what is supposed to make movies like GOODLAND impactful is the way that they represent small town, middle America in a rather brutal and gritty way in purposeful inversion to the more traditional, warm and inviting Norman Rockwell depiction us oldsters grew up with. While I may be a bit paranoid, it's hard to avoid the feeling that there is some sort of political/cultural statement in there somewhere, which is more than a little annoying.
In short, as pointed out by others, if you have seen FARGO then you generally know what to expect thematically of GOODLAND, only not as well done. Additionally, I found the ending to be needlessly brutal, dissatisfying, and a pointless slap in the face to most of the rest of what had transpired in the movie; whoops... It's time to wrap this up. Let's kill everybody, good guy included, in a sad and pointless way and turn off the cameras. We're done.
