RICHARD JEWELL (2019)

Rated:  R

STARS: Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Olivia Wilde, Jon Hamm
DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
GENRE: Docudrama

There is no denying that Clint Eastwood is a master filmmaker, and in Richard Jewell he has crafted a riveting drama with clearly defined good guys and bad guys that will push all of your buttons. Clearly defined, that is, if you want to buy into Eastwood's right-eous vision of the world.

Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser)--as you may or may not recall--was the security guard who discovered a bomb in an abandoned backpack in Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. He alerted police on the premises and saved lives by helping to get people cleared away from the scene before the blast went off--resulting in two deaths and injuring over a hundred unsuspecting souls attending an outdoor concert. 

Initially hailed as a hero, Jewell then came under suspicion as a suspect in the bombing. He is portrayed as a dimwitted loose cannon, who had a habit of getting fired from his law enforcement and security guard jobs. Jon Hamm, as FBI agent Tom Shaw, leads a team of overzealous and unscrupulous investigators bent upon fingering Jewell as the culprit. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution breaks the story--and as we see so often today, another individual is convicted in the court of public opinion long before due process has run its course. Jewell was eventually cleared of any involvement in the bombing that was engineered by Eric Rudolph 

Outstanding turns from Hauser, who seems born for this role, and the reliably excellent Sam Rockwell as Jewell's feisty lawyer, make this as compelling a drama as you'll find. But the integrity of Clint Eastwood's art is compromised by his insistence on making a political statement in essentially everything he does. In this case it's an obvious and heavy-handed one--demonizing two of today's popular targets of the right (and that originates straight from the top of the McDonald's eating political food chain), the free press and the FBI. 

Eastwood saw his chance to hop on the bandwagon. He plays fast and loose with the truth, as in the portrayal of newspaper reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), who broke the story about Jewell coming under suspicion, as being an amoral opportunist who would do whatever--including trading sexual favors to get a news scoop. Scruggs' former colleagues, family and friends reportedly were not contacted by the filmmakers to get the scoop on who she really was and what she was about. 

Eastwood apparently felt it was okay to besmirch a deceased person's reputation to serve his own agenda as tit-for-tat because of what happened to poor hapless Richard Jewell. But the film going public may be better equipped to smell a rat than Eastwood gives them credit for.

Richard Jewell is bombing at the box office.

Grade:  C -

JILL'S TAKE

As one of my unbendable rules, I never read reviews before seeing a film. I don't want any preprogrammed opinions sneaking into my thought processes. Alas, with Richard Jewel, Yahoo couldn't wait to plaster "worst box office opening in four generations of film-making" across my unsuspecting monitor. So I went in, ready to dump all kinds of vitriol on old Clint's latest offering.... How relieved I was not to have to do that to one of the all time great film-makers.

Richard Jewell was terrific. Engrossing. Brilliantly acted (I'll get to that later). And wrongly crucified by some, not all, film critics.

I get so (friggin') tired of people judging artistic endeavors by disagreeing politically. Just like I get pissed off with celebrities who use their public clout to endorse a political candidate. (Better they put their money where their mouth shouldn't be.) But I digress....

If Katy Bates doesn't get nominated for Best Supporting Actor for her role as Richard Jewell's mom—a hapless victim of the FBI's over zealous behavior—I will run naked down Del Mar's main thoroughfare. When Bates goes in front of the cameras, pleading for privacy and defending her son's innocence, it's cinematic magic. Pure and simple.

So what did I find fault with in this film? Very little. I wasn't bored. I didn't feel preached to. I know it was very unflattering to the press and the FBI but the story called for that. If I had to criticize anything it would be Jon Hamm's wooden performance. (And I loved him in "Mad Men.") Perhaps I should blame the screenwriter Billy Ray instead. No character deserves to be so one-dimensional.

As the movie ended, one man insisted on clapping. I wanted to join him but lost my nerve.

Grade: B+

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THE MULE (2018)

STARS: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Dianne Wiest
DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
GENRE: Drama/ Dark Comedy

Clint Eastwood is Earl Stone, a 90 year-old (the man himself is 88) horticulturist and Korean war vet who's been estranged from his family for some time. We're not sure why he missed his daughter's wedding in favor of the bottle. Maybe he just likes his space. When he falls on hard times and his business is foreclosed upon, Earl must seek an alternate income. Stepping in to fill the void is a Mexican drug cartel. They see he has a clean driving record and would potentially make a good "mule,"or drug courier. Soon Earl is transporting mega-bucks worth of cocaine in his truck--initially not even aware of what his cargo is, until he gets curious and checks it out in his trunk. 

His naivete about the whole thing is hard for us to buy. But maybe he doesn't want to know. It's a job, and his employers aren't encouraging him to be nosy. The wads of cash he starts raking in may allow him to buy his way back into the good graces of his ex-wife (Dianne Wiest) and his daughter and grand daughter, who's impending wedding may give him a chance to redeem himself.

When I walk into a Clint Eastwood film, I'm always wondering how he's going to politicize this one. He does, of course, in The Mule, but he seems to have softened since the likes of his jingoistic American Sniper. He's got a sense of humor, and it's on display in spades, as he pokes playful fun at lesbians, millennials, and minorities, among others.  

Much like Woody Allen, Eastwood is speaking through his characters, but the Jewish humor is replaced by what you'd expect from a curmudgeonly old white guy who leans so far to the right you wonder when he's going to tip over. But he let's his characters throw it right back at him as they grow increasingly frustrated and bewildered by Earl's erratic and unpredictable ways. The one-liners and the zingers fall in all the right places, and the theater audience eats it up. 

Eastwood has learned his lesson since surrounding himself with non-actors in the disastrous Gran Torino, and The 15:17 To Paris (less disastrous). His Latino cartel guys are authentically bad-ass, and the rest of the cast, including Bradley Cooper as a DEA agent who is on Earl's tail, is well-seasoned. Also on board are Andy Garcia, Laurence Fishburne, and Alison Eastwood--Clint's real life daughter--playing his movie daughter. There's some type-casting for you.

The Mule is a breezy ride, in a darkly comedic sort of way--there's even some boobs and gyrating booty thrown in for the younger set. Fun for the whole family! And Eastwood still gets his message across--that the world has taken some pretty strange turns since he and his peers were coming up. On that, I'll have to agree.

Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE

To quote Will Rogers, "A difference of opinion is what makes horse racing and missionaries." And, boy, do Tim and I differ on this one. Yes, given Mr. Eastwood's advanced age, his acting skills (remembering lines, walking briskly, the nuances of his facial expressions, etc.) is impressive. But so is Christopher Plummer's on screen presence. (And he's 89!)

My main beef with The Mule is its repetitiveness. Do we really need to see old Clint make 12 drug deliveries? And how many singing-in-the-car scenes are necessary? Because this film juggles three separate storylines—drug trafficking, family estrangements and cops chasing after Clint—I got tired of having to switch my focus. Granted the writers Sam Dolnick and Nick Schenk had to stick to the facts presented in the New York Times Magazine Article "The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-year-old Drug Mule." But it got confusing at times. And annoying.

But Clint Easwood's body of work is nothing to scoff at. Unlike Tim, my favorite old curmudgeon role of his was in Gran Torino. And my all-time favorite role was his portrayal of Dave in the 1971 classic Play Misty For Me. The very fact that everyone has a "favorite Clint Eastwood film" is testament to his overall talent and durability.

Sadly, this one left me wishing I could partake of some of that cocaine so I'd enjoy The Mule more....

Grade: C

THE 15:17 TO PARIS (2018)

Rated:  PG-13

STARS: Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, Alex Skarlatos, Jenna Fischer, Judy Greer
DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
GENRE: Drama

We're all familiar with the inspirational story of three young American buddies who thwarted a terrorist attack on a train from Amsterdam to Paris in 2015, saving the lives of the 500 passengers on board. In The 15:17 To Paris, director Clint Eastwood brings the story to the big screen in a way that no one else likely would have dared--he got the real heroes to portray themselves. The film is peppered with teaser shots of the intense and masterfully done climactic scene in order to tide us over through the somewhat bland but not uninteresting backstory of their lives.   

Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone is singled out to be the fully developed character, ostensibly because he had the biggest--or at least the bloodiest--role in subduing the heavily armed bad guy. We follow Spencer from the schoolyard (he was something of a rebel) through Air Force basic training, and much of the first half of the film plays like a recruitment video for the military. But to Eastman's credit, he's not jingoistic about it. No veiled jabs at Muslims. He's telling a story and everything in the story speaks for itself. 

Eastwood's bold, and as it turns out, brilliant move in casting the real heroes as themselves has likely created more buzz for the film than anything else.  For me, the curiosity factor of how these non actors would do was the major reason I wanted to see it---that and the fact that it's a totally compelling story. 

Eastwood used non actors before in Gran Torino, with some embarrassing results, and I was hoping that these guys could raise that bar at least a bit. No problema. They're not going to win any Oscars, but their chemistry together is quite literally the real thing. It helps that they are affable guys...the kind you'd bring home to mom (or mom might bring home after a night out at the beer joint).

The three of them end up backpacking through Europe together. We're treated to panoramic views of Venice, and the introduction of a comely American girl who decides to tag along with them. If only they could have come up with something more authentically Italian than "Volare" to be playing in the background. That's like going to a French restaurant and ordering a cheeseburger, but then The 15:17 To Paris is tailored to heartland American tastes. Ah, but just when you start thinkin' it's gonna be goody-two-shoes all the way, they throw in a sexy, let-it-loose disco scene with some unmistakably European babes shakin' their booty! 

Stone has premonitions, and the theme of fate has something big in store for us is played up throughout. The train rumbles toward Paris as the film proceeds toward its inexorable climax, the scene we've all been waiting for. The ten minute terrorist take-down sequence, filmed in real time is riveting, soul-stirring cinema at its best. Well worth the wait. And at just over an hour and a half in duration, The 15:17 To Paris doesn't take an interminably long time to get you there. 
Grade:  B +  

JILL'S TAKE

OMG. I can't believe two reasonably intelligent, visually savvy people could differ so wildly. But this is one case where I couldn't disagree more with Tim's assessment of Eastwood's latest faux film. I think he chose to cast the real guys because he realized that, without them, there was no story. (I hate to tell you, Clint, but there still was no story!) Yes, there was an incident on a train that was, indeed, brave and heroic. But since everybody in the audience knew that from the get-go, building a movie around it—with three basically bland characters to work with—was a challenge that would've had even Willie Shakespeare pulling his hair out.

Of the three non actors, I felt Anthony Sadler was by far the most authentic. I had to laugh at the striking physical resemblance between non actor Alek Skarlatos and actor Scott Eastwood. (I'll just bet he was furious that his dad didn't cast him in the role!)

The only redeemable thing in this paean to patroitism was the score which I was certain Clint Eastwood had composed himself. I was shocked to find that Christian Jacob scored the film. (He also composed the score for Sully so he's good at disaster-avoidance flicks.) But one cheap musical shot I just have to point out was a scene in Germany, where the tour guide corrects our third hero Spencer Stone about where Hitler and Eva Braun are buried. As he cycles away, he sings "Springtime for Hitler In Germany...." A song fromThe Producers that was totally out of place. (But Mel Brooks must have been pleased.)

Save your money!

Grade: D- 

AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)

Rated: R

STARS: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller
DIRECTOR:  Clint Eastwood
GENRE: Action/War

Knowing Clint Eastwood's politics, I knew going in that American Sniper was going to portray its subject as a hero and true patriot, and that is pretty much what we get. Eastwood apparently doesn't go any deeper than my-country-right-or-wrong--the Dick Cheney credo of the end always justifies the means-- and that the world is made up of good guys and bad guys and very little in between (like in those spaghetti westerns of his early career) and thus anything is permitted, and justified, if it eliminates the bad guys.  (Of course, the more we do that around the world, the more "bad guys" keep popping up in Whac-A-Mole fashion to threaten us. What's up with that?)     

Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) was a Navy Seal sniper with 160 confirmed kills (men, women, and children) to his credit during the Iraq war. (To be fair, those women and children were allegedly acting in threatening ways, like attempting to blow up some of our troops.)  There is no Iraqi in this movie that isn't portrayed as some kind of potential threat. The ones who have taken up arms against us are "savages," so dispatching them can be done without a whit of soul-searching. They become mere stick figures--like the anonymous war-whooping Indians getting picked off one by one by the "good guy" cowboys in the western films many of us grew up with.  Okay, there is one scene where Kyle has his sights trained on a young boy who is about to pick up an anti-tank weapon and do some damage with it. The sniper sweats and grimaces, and begs under his breath for the kid to put the weapon down so he doesn't have to shoot him. This is supposed to show us that Kyle has a conscience. That runs contrary to the real guy's assertion that killing was "FUN,"  and his unsubstantiated claim that he had murdered looters during hurricane Katrina. So draw your own conclusions about that.

Technically, American Sniper is superb. The combat scenes are among the most realistic I have seen. But they go on and on and on, covering Kyle's four tours of duty, and after a while you become numb watching them, and ultimately bored because of the tremendous overkill (pardon the pun). I can't imagine anyone but 14 year-old boys addicted to playing war games on Xbox being avidly engaged with this kind of stuff all the way through. And that is where Eastwood misses the mark. He gives us an out and out action movie, where a little balance, by examining some of the moral and psychological aspects of it all, would have made it a much better film. 

To the director's credit, he does give some cursory play to  the effects of PTSD, and how it affected his subject and others returning from the battlefield. Perhaps numbing us out with all the violence in American Sniper is supposed to make us draw a parallel between that and the numbed out Chris Kyle, whose social skills had departed, and he could no longer relate to his family or people he would meet when he was back home. There is a scene at a picnic gathering where we observe what a ticking time bomb the man had become. 

Speaking of which, I fear we are becoming a nation of numbed-out voyeurs, inured to the violence we see, and so we keep increasing the dose of the drug just to feel something. American Sniper does that by ramping it up and feeding into our insatiable appetite for blood (maybe that's why vampire flick are so popular) that we drink up on television, on the movie screen, and in the news. It's a sick obsession, but those with mental health issues rarely recognize it themselves until someone points it out. And so the image of the female breast in a movie continues to be blurred out when it shows on TV, but all the grisly blood-spattering-against-the-wall scenes of murder and mayhem are fine and dandy.  

As for this film, I can't give it a pass based on technical merit alone. Not when Clint Eastwood fails to examine the complicated issues involving real HUMAN BEINGS on both sides of the conflict, or the reasons why we've been drawn into this war of ideologies--with no end in sight--in the first place.     

Grade: C--

JILL'S TAKE

After that rant, who'd have the balls to disagree? Me. But not by much. Unlike my co-writer, I feel Clint Eastwood did take the time to explain why psychologically Chris Kyle was such a patriot-turned-killer. At the very beginning of the film, we witness a scene at the dinner table where Kyle's dad gives a speech to his two boys about lambs versus wolves. This dad reminded me of another tough-guy Marine played so brilliantly by Robert Duvall in The Great Santini. Before signing up to go to war, we see Kyle as a rodeo rider/wannabe cowboy and it's easy to assume he's seen every John Wayne movie that ever existed.

I'm not here to judge the rightness or wrongness of war. It's a movie, after all. Based on a best-selling book. As a movie, I felt it was overly long. By Kyle's fourth tour of duty, I was nodding off despite all the blood and bomb blasts. Still, it made me understand why so many soldiers return from this craziness and commit suicide. (The numbers are truly staggering.) Back to the film and Bradley Cooper's perfomance. I'm told he gained 35 pounds to play the part and he was certainly convincing as both a fearless sniper and a zoned out husband. I don't, however, think he deserves an Oscar. Not compared to the other contenders.

As a TV watcher, I had to giggle at cameo appearances by Eric Close as DIA Agent Snead (he plays the mayor in Nashville) and Jonathan Groff as YoungVet Mads (he's a gay man, eager to get laid in HBO's Looking). That's the problem with being a regular on TV: it's jarring to see that same actor in a different role. Be that as it may, I didn't hateAmerican Sniper. Or get emotionally upset by its content. Maybe I should have. But war has -- and always will -- provide us with many an Oscar-winning film.

Grade: B

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (2012)

Rated:  PG-13

Stars: Clint Eastwood,  Amy Adams,  Justin Timberlake,  John Goodman
Director: Robert Lorenz
Genre: Drama 

The latest Clint Eastwood vehicle, Trouble With The Curve, is standard formulaic fare, with the major plot developments pretty easy to spot coming straight down the pike.  And yet, I'm still just enough of a romantic sap to have gotten drawn in by the emotionally manipulative Walter Mitty-in-a-baseball-cap climax, which saves the win for this movie in the final inning. 

Clint Eastwood is Gus Lobel, a snarly over the hill major league baseball scout who possesses a sixth sense about evaluating the upcoming young talent he has been hired to observe. And he needs it, because his eyesight is failing. (Eastwood is now 82 years old. In the real world, a Gus Lobel would have been put out to pasture long ago, but Eastwood can pass for ten years younger than his chronological age, so the bounds of believability are not stretched too terribly tight on that score.)  

So Gus's thirty-something daughter, Mickey, (Amy Adams)  an attorney with a good shot at making partner in her firm, puts an important case on the back burner to become dad's seeing eye dog in the evaluation of one particular player--a hot prospect named  Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill.)  But is she ultimately sacrificing her own career for the sake of saving not-so-dear-old-dad's?   (They've had a strained relationship over the years.)     

Enter the obligatory romantic interest for Mickey in the person of Johnny Flanagan, (Justin Timberlake),  former pitcher and now working as a scout for a different team. But Mickey has had trouble getting close to people, and it's tied up with the abandonment she felt about her father's absence during her formative years.

Amy Adams turns in the only noteworthy performance in Trouble With The Curve. though they've tried to make her character some super-human savant, like the ones who have memorized the contents of the telephone book. Yes, she's a chip off the old block, but she spouts off obscure details of decades old baseball games (who were the three batters that Sandy Koufax retired in the bottom of the ninth when he pitched his perfect game in 1965?  That kind of stuff.)   Nobody who doesn't sit around and devote their whole life to memorizing baseball statistics would come up with that stuff, and as an attorney we assume she has better things to do, so here they HAVE stretched the bounds of believability to the breaking point. It may be a small thing in the context of the entire film, but for me the devil is in the details.     

Clint Eastwood will never veer too far from some modified version of Dirty Harry, or the sullen cigar-chomping tough guy from his spaghetti western days, and he growls his way through Trouble With The Curve in similar fashion. He does  get a shot at demonstrating some emotional depth here, but comes off sort of  like Popeye crying in his spinach. But fans won't care, because if they are true fans they have long ago accepted his limited range, and they are in love with the persona--kind of like the way that I will watch anything Zooey Deschanel is in and become completely absorbed into the black holes of her eyes, and not remember or care about anything else in the movie.

It's all wrapped up in a neat bow at the end, but the climactic scene is a real fist-pumper, and for that reason I am grading this movie on the curve. 

GRADE:  B

  

TIMMY'S OVERLOOKED GEMS AND CURIOSITIES # 2

BREEZY--1973

Rated: R

Stars: William Holden, Kay Lenz, Roger C. Carmel

Director: Clint Eastwood

Genre: Romantic Drama

ASSESSMENT: CURIOSITY

One of Clint Eastwood's largely forgotten directorial efforts, Breezy is a cultural time capsule--a sweet little May-December romance with undertones of Hollywood's dismissive attitude toward the hippie counterculture of the day.

Kay Lenz is the free-spirited "Breezy," and as the nickname would suggest, the opening scene finds her trying to tiptoe out the door on some dude she's just spent the night with, giving us the first of numerous T&A shots that she will benevolently bestow upon us throughout the film. (Reminding us poor silicone-bombarded lads of the twenty-first century how beautiful a woman's NATURAL breasts can be when they don't look like two identical over-inflated party balloons!)

While hitchhiking, Breezy gets picked up by this perv guy who broad brushes the whole counter culture movement of the sixties and early seventies as a bunch of "hippie-dippies,"

while simultaneously trying to put the moves on her. She has to bail on the guy, and ends up outside the Laurel Canyon digs of real estate agent Frank Harmon (William Holden). Frank is initially stand-offish to her--he's gone through a devastating divorce, and anyway, as he notes in one scene, he's twice her age. An understatement because Holden was 55 in 1973, (and actually looked over sixty) and Kay Lenz was 20, playing a character who is ostensibly 18 or 19.

Anyway, she keeps coming back, hanging around, and slipping in and out of her duds in front of him to take a shower and stuff-- in that cavalier manner that chicks had back then (oh, for the good old days) and before you know it--convention be damned-- they've got a thang goin' on.

But Breezy is not what she seems. What she really wants is romance, commitment... and hey, Frank's upscale lifestyle wouldn't hurt either. What Frank wants is to enjoy her favors for a time, and then remind himself of what a foolish old goat he is to think that this preposterous affair could last. And that, of course, leads to the bittersweet part of Breezy .

On the surface, Kay Lenz and William Holden may have been the oddest of Hollywood's odd-couple pairings, but there was a chemistry there that seemed to work, nonetheless--especially in their sweetly erotic candle-lit bedroom scene-- giving (false) hope to all the aging lechers who still maintained hopes they might snag a wayward young thing of easy virtue like Breezy, who would be just as arbitrary about her choice of rutting mates. (Not to be confused, amidst all the election talk, with running mates.)

The acting was nothing special--Kay Lenz was still honing her skills at this point--and Holden's performance is one-dimensional, but fitting in with the overall quality of what we were accustomed to in those days because most of the actors were "acting." No directors like Jim Jarmusch around at the time. (Remember how wooden the performances seemed in those movies from the forties and fifties? It got a little better in the sixties, but still pretty spotty until the likes of Dustin Hoffman came along.)

Breezy, which could best be described as an adult style fairy tale, gets the nod as a curiosity-- sort of an anti-Easy Rider of its era, where the free-spirited flower child stands out as an oddity because she's surrounded by some real squares. Nonetheless, it's an interesting film, if for nothing else than the jaundiced-eyed snapshot of an era it presents.

With some original music by Michele Legrand.

GRAN TORINO (now playing at home where grandma asked if you'd gotten a toupee--but it was just the cat sitting on your head)

In Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood channels the spirit of Dirty Harry--senior citizen style. But it's like a Christmas tree with a shiny star on top and...oops...nothing else to fill out the branches.

Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) is a cantankerous old fart--a decorated Korean war veteran who lives next door to a Hmong family (immigrants from southeast Asia). He's an up front racist--a product of the era he grew up in and his experiences during the war. Living in close proximity with the Hmongs stirs up Walt's old prejudices-- but things gradually begin to thaw, (global warming?) and Walt's humanity begins to peep through when he takes the neighbor boy, Thao, (Bee Vang) under his wing. Thao's a good kid at heart--but he's torn between remaining that way, or getting mixed up with a local street gang.

When his hand is forced, Walt starts kickin' ass and taking names with the gang punks, and this is where Eastwood's scowling Dirty Harry persona emerges for one last hurrah. Walt sums it up when he says: WHAT THE HELL IS IT WITH KIDS, NOWADAYS? If there's any part of Gran Torino you could call satisfying, it's when the gang scum start getting their comeuppance courtesy of the Walt man.

His prized 1972 Gran Torino--which stays mainly motionless (a mistake) in the garage--serves as a symbol for all the old fashioned values (minus the racism) Walt is trying to defend. This would have been a more exciting film if Walt had taken that baby out, gunned the sucker, and chased the gang bangers all around the city while listening to some Glenn Miller music on the radio. But maybe he didn't want to mar the finish.

There's a bit of amusement when Walt attempts to teach Thao to "talk like a man." It's a quaint mixture of B.S. and bravado--the kind of raunchy trash talking guys used to do all the time (and still do when the political correctness police aren't around).

Unfortunately--and there's no other way to say this--the acting in Gran Torino is so awful that it's embarrasing at times. Yes, Eastwood (who produced and directed the film) has surrounded himself with inexperienced actors--but if I run an auto repair shop and Clint is paying me to work on his car, the fact that I may be employing unseasoned mechanics doesn't absolve me of the responsibility to get the job done right. While his fledgling cast mostly drones in monotone, Clint frequently over does it. When he sneers out the side of his mouth, he kinda looks like Popeye.

Too bad, because the screenplay--which is about the triumph of human decency over hate--had a lot of potential. This group just couldn't pull it off.

So I'm sorry to bring you the bad news, Mr. Eastwood...but there's no way in heaven or hell to save this clunker from the scrap heap.

GRADE: D- (and I'm being generous)