this movie deserve more than a 6/10..
IMO it is 7/10 material..good and smooth story-telling..although i feel it still can be improve in some areas such as more action, but this show is good..a 7/10 from me.
shareI watched it a few nights ago I would easily rate the film a 5/10 or less.
It was trying so hard to be something its not. It's attempt to follow a laid out formula from previous successful movies of the same genre was painfully transparent. The 3 main characters where really bad at acting and at times laughable. The dialogue, again laughable, (wargasm's...really!?) and the directing felt amateur throughout. The voice over was a horrid cliched experience throughout.
The plot was cheesy and over exaggerated in an attempt to give it an edge it could never hope to achieve and the ending was one of the dumbest decisions from a director ive seen in a long time.
Del Toro's and Travolta's characters were great though, with really good performances from both and actually saved the film from being a total disaster.
This film had so much potential but instead came across as a 16 year olds attempt to create an edgy 'drug/cartel' themed flashback story. It deserves no more than 5/10
6/10 for me and that's being generous.
It had the typical Oliver Stone flourishes and the story was quite interesting apart from the fact that I just couldn't accept the central trio of characters as capable of running this huge west coast operation that hadn't attracted police attention apart from Dennis. Nor could I really accept them in the depicted ménage à trois. Chon and Ben just appeared to be too dissimilar and O didn't strike me as the alluring character she was being sold as; rather more like a none too smart valley girl primarily into her shopping at the coastal malls.
I agree with others who think that O's narration didn't add any thing to the movie and that ending??? What were you thinking Oliver?
On the positive side Benicio Del Toro was frightening as Lado and John Travolta more than serviceable as Dennis.
Stone's movies always have interest, but there's a few misfires amongst this one IMO.