Reading (and reviewing) a new Clint biography so revisiting his work at odd intervals. I’ve always disliked this one and still do, not just for the material - which, natch, is weak, Dennis Lehane being the very definition of high-toned hackery - but Eastwood’s capitulation to it; there’s no real tension between form and content, no unruly subtext, just a kind of packaged pathos that you’d have to wilfully misread as conservative vengeance-porn but doesn’t rise above the level of…
Still rips, and still stands as the very peak of Danny Boyle's whole deal: ugliness as subject and texture; periods of sustained disorientation punctuated by blunt-force trauma. Also the peak of Alex Garland's whole deal: there was actually some meat in the gym mats back then, with frothing, mindless, contagious rage tabbed, aptly and mercilessly, as a potent apocalyptic accelerant. Great use of Murphy, Gleeson, and Eccleston, back in the paranoid mode of Shallow Grave. Watched in anticipation of a sequel that I am -- perhaps foolishly -- allowing myself to think might be not only worthy (and properly scary) but right on time.
