A movie with wasted potential all around.



Start with a good story but ruin it by making the main characters so unlikable no one really could care about them. For instance, take Casey Affleck, who does a pretty decent acting job, and make his character detestable almost immediately. Then there's the soundtrack. It's great music but it's played too loud most of the time and occasionally it becomes so loud it's painful. Who is responsible for making the decision to blast the audience out of the room? And who edited this mess? Frequent flashbacks without any transitional indicators? I was lost on occasions...unable to tell when the scene was taking place in reference to the storyline. That's sloppy work. Furthermore, who casted this thing? Both the brothers have blonde wives and when the shots are medium to long distance it's sometimes hard to tell who is who. For instance, at the house fire scene a blonde is hysterical and being comforted by the firemen present and then carted off in an ambulance. I wasn't sure which character this was since her face was not clear in any shots and, in turn, it wasn't clear whose house was on fire. Again, sloppy work. And, dammit, is it necessary these days that every second utterance of dialog be profanity? Maybe the dialog is supposed to highlight the dysfunctional state of the characters. To me, it just makes them even more unlikable. It also indicates a screenwriter with no ability to write coherent, meaningful dialog.



But mainly, this was just a downer movie from beginning to end. A downer movie that is badly put together. From Amazon's blurb, we are led to believe it's an uplifting movie. It's not. I really hated it.