This is a decent movie at its very best. It's very well watchable but as a genre movie its too lacking in its story and execution of it. With all of its praising this movie is receiving on here, it surely is a bit of an overrated movie.
Problem for me while watching this movie was that I knew that this was simply the type of movie in which nothing is what it seems, which made me all the more aware all of the time, making me see lots of the twists within this movie from miles away already. The movie was just being a bit too obvious with its intentions and what directions it was heading toward. The movie therefore wasn't really being very surprising, despite having more than a few twists to its story. Also a bit too many perhaps. It's best to have one big twist at the ending than to have multiple twists throughout its entire story. It's just less effective and powerful.
Guess its a good enough first theatrical directorial movie debut for Bill Paxton, who doesn't provide the movie with a good style or distinctive atmosphere but nevertheless sets the right mood and knows to tell the story, despite the story not being all that great. The movie never made it to most cinemas though and its not hard to see way. The movie is too typical for its genre and it doesn't stand out in any way. Movies like this get made by the dozens each year, especially during those days and there simply are far better and more surprising genre movies to watch out there.
For his first big movie Bill Paxton knew to get some big names involved. It makes you wonder though if they would had also agreed to this project hadn't Paxton been involved in it. Matthew McConaughey and Powers Boothe are some big name actors but also the crew has some big names in it, such as the director of photography Bill Butler.
It's also hard to see what the movie and its story try to achieve really. Are we supposed to be sympathetic at the end and which side are we supposed to be on? The movie perhaps in the long run leaves more questions than answers really, which makes the movie a bit of an unsatisfying one.
No, it's no bad movie but it's also far from a must-see as well really.
6/10
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