The tale of an outlaw who escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and the daughter he has never met. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: David Lowery
Starring: Rooney Mara, Ben Foster, Casey Affleck and others
It had been a while since I had either seen Richard Gere, Susan
Sarandon or Tim Roth in anything noteworthy but to my own surprise,
this was being a solid thriller, with truly some great performances by
its cast.
It is absolutely true that without its cast this would had been a very
formulaic, standard, average, little thriller. As a matter of fact, it
more feels like an extended "Law & Order" episode. The characters and
developments aren't anything surprising but the movie truly gets made
interesting by its cast, who also help to make this a convincing and
effective thriller.
I have never even been a too big fan of Richard Gere but he simply was
absolutely great in this! He mostly carries this entire movie and he
does this by playing a sort of despicable character. So it's a real
accomplishment by him that he still managed to turn the main character
into a still likable enough one, that you never lost interest in. He
doesn't make the right choices throughout the movie but that's what
keeps his character interesting and helps to let the movie move along,
even during its slower moments.
It's the sort of thriller in which everything starts to go from bad to
worse for its main character, when his lies and actions only get him in
more and deeper problems and drags those close to him down, along with
him.
But really, it remains a far from perfect thriller and still does
plenty of things wrong. It does a poor job at handling some of its
characters for instance. For example, it heavily under uses the Susan
Sarandon character, who could had given the movie a whole other
dimension and some more depth with her character. After all, she plays
the main character's wife, who has certain knowledge about things that
don't come into play until very late into the movie, when things are
already starting to wrap up. The whole dynamic between her and the Gere
character had much more potential really and I thought it was a real
shame this didn't get explored any further and better. Also, I would
had loved to have seen more of Susan Sarandon, since she gave away a
great performance.
That's a bit of a problem with this entire movie; it just doesn't know
how to handle and what to do with certain characters. The Tim Roth
character also definitely feels a bit underused. When he shows up you
think he is going to play a big and important role for this movie but
in fact there are large portions of the movie in which his character
plays no role at all. I absolutely loved his scene with Richard Gere
and I was hoping for more moments like that, which unfortunately just
never came.
I still really enjoyed this thriller and at times was even loving it.
It's definitely a better than average genre attempt, despite still
having a very standard and familiar type of premise and story in it. So
in essence, nothing surprising but it's all still very well made and
acted out by its impressive cast, which already is worth the price
alone.
