Conflicto de intereses

The promising first half-hour is let down by the failure to develop the characters and thus waste a great cast. Downey Jnr is a fantastic actor but is given very little to work with, same goes for Hannah, Berenger and Janssen (who seems to have no purpose in the film whatsoever). Davidtz would've been great if her character had grown, but instead all she got to do was mope around for the whole movie. Majority of the bog-standard material here is given to Branagh, and although he is by no means poor, he just does not get the viewer involved in his battle.

The direction, for me, was the film's only virtue. Altman creates a wonderfully dark and intriguing atmosphere, it's just a shame neither the story nor the undercooked characters are equally dark and intriguing.

With more complex characters, more of Downey Jnr and Jansenn, and more explosive dialogue, I could've easily overlooked and forgiven the silly plot turns and contrivances, but sadly they stick out like a sore thumb.

Disappointing sub-noir thriller. 4/10

I give it a solid 7. The acting was good and the story was good, to a point. Some of the actions of the criminal did not make sense, but I guess there are a lot of real criminals in prison that also ran a little short in that area . I can say the same thing for the lawyer. One minute he is brilliant and the next he does not know what is going on. Real people many times do the same. Fact is stranger than fiction. As an arm chair director I think this movie could have been better. Its worth watching.

While it's true, as others have noted, that this movie succeeds on style (acting, direction and cinematography are all first-rate) a thriller must have a compelling plot, and that is something that Grisham's paint-by-numbers approach consistently fails to deliver. There is a bit of a zig and a zag at the end, but it remains utterly conventional and unsurprising, and while it's watchable one can't help but feel cheated. All that talent and atmosphere, and whiffs of tantalizing plot developments that never amount to much, make this movie one long tease.

You got it, even though this movie is from director Robert Altman, he has managed to produce a very average thriller here, which is raised a few bars up by the cast, which takes the movie with ease. Robert Duvall is underused (he only has three or four lines of dialogue), and Robert Downey Jr. performs his usual "wisecracker" role. The treat here is seeing Kenneth Branagh on one of his non-Shakespeare incursions and stepping into the skin of a workaholic, stressed-out, mundane lawyer which bumps into a woman that will change his way of life. Altogether it is rather watchable, but doesn't bring anything new to the genre, and one thinks if the names involved aren't just a way to promote such a standard script. Anyway, it has some fun in it, despite the clichés.

The plot of this film was only bad in the last section of the film. Before that it builds up to something good that never comes. I had to learn a Southern accent for a play (being from Kentucky and not having a Southern accent of course) so I rented this movie and learned one. Kudos to Kenneth Branagh and Robert Downey Jr. Watching this film it seemed like there was about 45 minutes worth of plot missing that would have made this a good movie. IF you have the missing 45 minutes please send it to me.