Conspiracy

I like this genre and I like Val Kilmer but this movie was really bad.

This film is a pale imitation of the Spencer Tracy classic. It lacks the injustice, irony and clarity of the original. The film also lacks the menace and stifling tension of the Spencer Tracy version.

Tracy was tougher though more vulnerable than Kilmer. The original contained startling, precise violence against realistic bad guys. Tracy remains fearful but steadfast. Kilmer is fearless but on his journey fights against cartoon characters and takes too many beatings.

Having said all that the film is quite entertaining. Val Kilmer portrays a tough marine well and the film builds up nicely to the final crisis. The end itself is a bit soppy.

The original Bad Day at Black Rock is probably one of the finest films ever made. It made important political and civil rights points about freedom and justice. This remake is not in the same league and is unnecessary. watch.

The plot: A former marine, trying to find out what happened to his friend, runs up against racist vigilantes.

I've never actually been that big of a Val Kilmer fan, but I'm willing to watch his movies. Unfortunately, as some people have already mentioned, this movie shares more than a few similarities to Steven Seagal's direct-to-video movies. It's got a left-leaning political message, an aging and out-of-shape movie star, and some truly awful dialogue.

I'm not going to lie. This is not a good movie. It's completely lacking in subtlety, one of the characters goes on a long political rant in the middle of the movie, and the fight choreography was not very impressive. However, I agree with the politics, I like Gary Cole, and I guess I'm a sucker for these cheesy direct-to-video movies. I'm willing to overlook a lot of things as long as I don't get bored.

I can't really recommend this movie to other people, but I found it a lot more tolerable than most reviewers. If you're a liberal, you're looking to waste 90 minutes, and you're a fan of Val Kilmer... well, maybe then you might want to see this movie, but you'd still have to be pretty desperate.

The good guys are good and the bad guys are real bad. Val Kilmer plays a one-legged Billy Jack in a nice twist on a story that will continue forever. Former special forces bad-ass who doesn't want to fight no-more gets roped into an evil environment (with a Dick Cheney clone as Darth Vader) and he finally gets pushed a little too far. He moves fast invisibly "Like a ghost" - with one leg. Works as well here as in old-fashioned radio theater.

Low-budget and thus sparse but well done with myriad close-ups and all characters as caricatures. There is no pretense of realism and thus it works as a comic book on screen. Screenplay, direction, camera work and acting are all at least interesting.

Val's character maintains a deadpan countenance throughout being blown to bits in Iraq, lifelessly engaging with hookers, and then getting beat down mercilessly by hateful gringos in Arizona who murdered his war buddy & family in cold blood. Wickedness dominates throughout so that even when he finally fights back, its anti-climactic, although he does do some slick special ops ghost work on some of those slimey pukes. There's a scene where the ditzy chick points a pistol at the arch baddie, and instead of immediately squeezing off multiple rounds, she dialogs with him, yakkity-yakking long enough for a henchman to come up behind her and take the gun. That scene is representative of how hard this movie is to watch. All that can be said positively about this movie is that it has Val Kilmer in it.