Should have been a classic

All the ingredients were there and the whole time watching it, I was rooting for this to be an intense, potentially "epic" '70s crime movie, and at first, it FELT like it could easily be just that, and then comes some contrived plot devices that bring you back into present day.

I won't spoil anything though, read the summary for a summary. The movie easily captures the '70s with its set pieces and locations and even gives you the feel of a movie made in that era. There are moments of brilliance that come in the form of suspenseful buildups, great direction, and editing and score work that turns some scene transitions into awesomness. With a 2 hour running time, I had no issues with it feeling long or boring. The acting is impressive on all accounts (some chemistry could be a bit weird though) and for about the first hour I was engaged and feeling, 'wow, if they could just keep this up,' and then of course, unfortunately, they don't.

I think one of its main problems is that the only real character development is placed on the two leads, so you can empathize when it calls for it and understand why the leads feel and act as they do, but only towards each other, and not always in the context of their interactions with supporting characters. The story calls for enough twists and turns that there is no room to do much developing with the supporting characters and this causes certain situations to happen rather abruptly or seem forced in order to get to the next stage. This could all be easily overlooked if it didn't happen so often (and at critical moments) and continually cause me to lose my suspension of disbelief while viewing an, otherwise, very well made movie. 1.Chris is quick to act and quick to kill throughout entire movie but then doesn't when Scarfo comes to club.2. Monica goes to club, tells Chris story of how Chris' unnamed, random friends ruff her up in an attempted rape and results in her fcking up entire operation. (wtf?) 3. Scarfo gets out of ducktape, kills club owner, gets out of club (wtf?!) everything is just so convenient.

Problems with plot are highly subjective so I still recommend this and am sure people will find what they were looking for, I ALMOST did. 6.5/10

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