I didn't enjoy this one much.
The film featured very little character development--for instance, Gene Hackman acted pretty well, but I had no idea where his character's motivations were coming from, so I couldn't understand him or relate to him at all. By the end of the movie, most of the characters were still in the exact same psychological state that they started in (they had no "arc"). Since everyone was incredibly boring and flat, I never really got attached to any of them or cared about their fate.
The plot was so-so; there weren't really any big "twists" in it and it wasn't particularly unique or provocative, which would be OK with me if it weren't for the fact that there isn't much else of interest in the rest of the film.
Sure, the movie is "gritty", but that alone doesn't make a movie worth watching. There are plenty of detective dramas I've seen that weren't as gritty as this, but the fact that they had excellent plots and/or interesting characters whom I came to care about made those movies vastly more entertaining than this one. Put simply, there was very little in this film that drew me into its world, besides some beautiful cinematography and a great car chase scene--possibly one of the best car chase scenes I've ever seen, actually, but it still didn't redeem the movie for me.
The film featured very little character development--for instance, Gene Hackman acted pretty well, but I had no idea where his character's motivations were coming from, so I couldn't understand him or relate to him at all. By the end of the movie, most of the characters were still in the exact same psychological state that they started in (they had no "arc"). Since everyone was incredibly boring and flat, I never really got attached to any of them or cared about their fate.
The plot was so-so; there weren't really any big "twists" in it and it wasn't particularly unique or provocative, which would be OK with me if it weren't for the fact that there isn't much else of interest in the rest of the film.
Sure, the movie is "gritty", but that alone doesn't make a movie worth watching. There are plenty of detective dramas I've seen that weren't as gritty as this, but the fact that they had excellent plots and/or interesting characters whom I came to care about made those movies vastly more entertaining than this one. Put simply, there was very little in this film that drew me into its world, besides some beautiful cinematography and a great car chase scene--possibly one of the best car chase scenes I've ever seen, actually, but it still didn't redeem the movie for me.