Before we actually get into the film in question, I need to get into the circumstances by which I saw this film in the first place. Partly as a means of full disclosure, but mainly because this is something of a first for this blog.
So, I got an email from one of NBCUniversal’s publicists, who offered me an in-season pass to this film for a review. That itself isn’t the unique part; this is actually fairly standard for most of the assignments I get from FilmInk. Except this isn’t through FilmInk. For whatever reason, the publicist contacted me directly to arrange this. As much as I want to crack jokes about how desperate they must be for official write-ups if they’re reaching out to this middle-of-nowhere blog for a review, or that they obviously didn’t see my last review for an Eastwood movie if they were expecting a glowing endorsement… man, getting recognised like this after all these years makes me quite happy, and I’d like to extend my thanks to Universal for reaching out. Although bear in mind that I’m not going to let that colour my opinion of the film itself.
Had I not been contacted and essentially given a free ticket to see this, I likely would have skipped over this feature entirely. I’m basically done with Clint Eastwood at this point. I don’t know how much more I can take of the guy trying to take down bogeymen only he can see (like he did at the Republican National Convention in 2012). I don’t want to see more from Mr. “My god is bigger than your statistics”. But hey, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I went and saw the movie… and was thankful that it was nothing like the material I’ve come to associate with the filmmaker in recent years.
