I can cut to the chase: In this film, Richie jerks off at the expense of ticket-buyers.
Choosing to make a film with crime as its theme--a "crime movie"--imposes a requirement: You have to make me care about the outcomes of stories involving criminals.
Richie's shorthand approach was the facile imposition of McConaughey's character as a de facto "good guy" anchor. The way, way, way overwrought brocade of morally "lesser" crime practitioners orbiting that calm center... Richie expects us to mistake all that heat as the shedding of light on the nature of criminal enterprise.
And I don't buy it. For one thing it was complex all out of proportion to the ostensible goal of crime stories to shed that light. The idea that such complexity will make us smarter on this is bogus. Like I say in my title, this generates lots and lots of heat. But absent the *light*, that heat is useless, and in fact a little insulting: Richie thinks I'm not going to notice.
Choosing to make a film with crime as its theme--a "crime movie"--imposes a requirement: You have to make me care about the outcomes of stories involving criminals.
Richie's shorthand approach was the facile imposition of McConaughey's character as a de facto "good guy" anchor. The way, way, way overwrought brocade of morally "lesser" crime practitioners orbiting that calm center... Richie expects us to mistake all that heat as the shedding of light on the nature of criminal enterprise.
And I don't buy it. For one thing it was complex all out of proportion to the ostensible goal of crime stories to shed that light. The idea that such complexity will make us smarter on this is bogus. Like I say in my title, this generates lots and lots of heat. But absent the *light*, that heat is useless, and in fact a little insulting: Richie thinks I'm not going to notice.