I know what the writer and director were trying to do here but they were way wide of the mark.
This is a supposed character study of a bad cop and a bad man in the LA of the 90's. The problem is that the character in question, played well by Woody Harrelson, is completely static throughout the movie. The story doesn't show him becoming corrupt or descending into lawlessness...he's already those things at the beginning of the story. The movie just shows those things catching up to him. And judging by his character the viewer has to wonder why it didn't happen much sooner because he is about a subtle as a steamroller.
Harrelson's character is irredeemable, unlikable, unsympathetic and almost unwatchable. You don't care about him or, other than his youngest daughter, anyone else in his life. I'm not sure what the story with the two women he lived with was, I think one was his ex-wife. I'm not sure about the other one but they were both almost as unlikable as he was. They were annoying and grating and irritating and completely unwatchable. I find Cynthia Nixon to be all of those things in anything she appears in so I may be a bit biased on this point. Still, his home life was portrayed as being as much a mess as the rest of his life and you end up reacting negatively to the entire scenario. You also wonder why these two woman had anything to do with him in the first place and find it very hard to care about them for choosing to even be there. The fact that they're both incredibly annoying doesn't really help either.
In the end what you have is a dull, slow moving movie about a terrible human being who happens to be a cop. He's a terrible human being at the start and is a terrible human being at the end. In between you just get to watch him being a terrible human being and a bad cop and that's pretty much the entire movie. And then it just ends, almost as if they ran out of money or Harrelson had other film commitments and had to move on. If you're in the mood to be annoyed, depressed and bored by a movie all at the same time this is definitely the film for you. Otherwise steer well clear of this mess.
This is a supposed character study of a bad cop and a bad man in the LA of the 90's. The problem is that the character in question, played well by Woody Harrelson, is completely static throughout the movie. The story doesn't show him becoming corrupt or descending into lawlessness...he's already those things at the beginning of the story. The movie just shows those things catching up to him. And judging by his character the viewer has to wonder why it didn't happen much sooner because he is about a subtle as a steamroller.
Harrelson's character is irredeemable, unlikable, unsympathetic and almost unwatchable. You don't care about him or, other than his youngest daughter, anyone else in his life. I'm not sure what the story with the two women he lived with was, I think one was his ex-wife. I'm not sure about the other one but they were both almost as unlikable as he was. They were annoying and grating and irritating and completely unwatchable. I find Cynthia Nixon to be all of those things in anything she appears in so I may be a bit biased on this point. Still, his home life was portrayed as being as much a mess as the rest of his life and you end up reacting negatively to the entire scenario. You also wonder why these two woman had anything to do with him in the first place and find it very hard to care about them for choosing to even be there. The fact that they're both incredibly annoying doesn't really help either.
In the end what you have is a dull, slow moving movie about a terrible human being who happens to be a cop. He's a terrible human being at the start and is a terrible human being at the end. In between you just get to watch him being a terrible human being and a bad cop and that's pretty much the entire movie. And then it just ends, almost as if they ran out of money or Harrelson had other film commitments and had to move on. If you're in the mood to be annoyed, depressed and bored by a movie all at the same time this is definitely the film for you. Otherwise steer well clear of this mess.