There were a lot of movies that I could have chosen to watch, but I was looking for something that I would find a bit more compelling, upbeat, and entertaining. 12 Years a Slave & Gravity weren’t on the agenda, because I felt like those are movies I have to mentally prepare for. On a Tuesday night when it’s a little cheaper, sometimes you get exactly what you pay for – a cheap movie. Ridley Scott has been the man for many movies, so when I saw the trailer for this movie and a loaded cast of names in the business (including a real life married couple), I thought ‘what the hay’ and went with it. Well, I don’t think I made the best decision here, because I felt like I was watching Savages all over again minus the bad terrible acting and plot that went nowhere.

You could look at this movie from different vantage points and you still couldn’t come to a common conclusion, because I felt like there were more questions to be answered than there were cleared up as the movie was moving along. You’ve got some drugs, you’ve got some bad guys, and you’ve got one naïve legal man caught up in the mix when he shouldn’t be in the game to begin with. It’s ironic that on the day that the Mayor of my city admits to having smoked crack cocaine, I go and watch a movie about a lawyer who takes a run at getting himself involved with the drug game. I mean…people can (and will) get hurt, and if you absolutely don’t know what you’re doing to begin with, then don’t do it at all. Michael Fassbender is a great actor, and I feel like this movie could have been a lot better had it not been for the constant unsolved riddles that stewed from the beginning to the end. Javier Bardem is as good an actor as there is out right now, and you don’t need to look far into his resume as to what he can bring you, and in this movie he served as a necessary comedic relief when things got awkwardly uneasy. Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt, because often it seems like he plays the same kind of ‘clean up guy’ role like what was portrayed in Killing Them Softly (good movie, by the way).

Women were the key focal points of the dialogue in the movie, and it was women in this movie that offered the key values in making everything that happened, happen. The problem was that their roles were poorly written and the acting didn’t make it much more than an eye-rolling escapade portrayed on screen. Much like how Salma Hayek & Blake Lively made me want to gauge my eyes out while I watched Savages, Cameron Diaz & Penelope Cruz made true to the term ‘it’s better to be seen than heard’. They’re gorgeous women – gorgeous, but lord have mercy they didn’t do anything to help their cause in this film.

Again, this could have had a different turn out had everything formulated well, but because there were so many unanswered questions and only assumptions, it felt incomplete although there were parts in the movie where you thought that everything would start to pick up. It was like watching a Philadelphia Eagles game in recent memory – so much potential, yet so much disappointment. I wouldn’t watch this even if it was a rental; I don’t feel the need to want to waste my time with this, and neither should you. But for now, this is my opinion, this is my review

That’s My Word & It STiXX