Reviews

I don't know what happened to Daniel Craig but his acting scored a minus 3 in this movie. Stuff, wooden, and unreal, he was better on Saturday Night Live.

When surrounded by an army of machine gun loaded trucks all shooting into his armored DB9, he sits there frozen faced while a screaming woman sitting next to him cannot even get him to look at her. Then after what seems like a full minute of inaction and no reaction to the lady sitting next to him screaming, he finally mumbles, "OK" and launches the hidden gattling guns in his headlights and hits the gas. Totally unbelievablly poor direction; unbelievable behavior.

How this got a 7.4 rating shows that all it takes to get a high IMDB rating is quantity, not quality, of senseless violence and action. It need not make sense at all. Just be loud.

A 4.0 at best.

I loved the parts about how they built "blue boxes" to hack the phone company way before they ever considered Apple. I'd read about Captain Crunch (John Draper) and the phone hacking boxes about 50 years ago when I was in college and this just confirms the story which was also published October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine.

Steve Jobs was not a very nice guy. He ripped off his friends, denied his own daughter, and bullied his employees. He was also a genius and designed excellent products that have changed the toy-box of America and the world. Without Steve Jobs ripping off Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) of their graphical user interface, the mouse, laser printers, and ethernet, these technological advances might have languished on the shelves of that Ivory Tower for years before they made it to the public market place. And remember that Steve Jobs designed the first real usable smart phone and pocket media player.

Unlike other Steve Jobs movies, this one is a documentary with real camera footage of the two Steves (J & W) in their early and later days. The Dylan musical background made me want to skip back to play some songs again and again.

This movie does not glorify nor defile Steve Jobs, but only tells it like he really was, with home movie footage to back it up. Very well done and easily held my interest and attention.

You need to know that this is a comedic crime movie with an intricate twist at the end.

The good actors and compelling plot held my interest from the start. The two movies that it reminded me of were Fargo because of the cold, snowy weather, and A Simple Plan for it's bumbling low-class crooks. Greg Kinnear plays the crooked insurance agent who plots to steal a million dollar violin from an old man for whom he is writing an insurance policy. Billy Crudup is very effective as the crooked locksmith who manages to get himself tangled up in the theft. Alan Arkin is great as the old man who plays the patsy but turns out to be the real brains behind a con that was so elaborate and intricate that I find it hard to believe they could actually pull it off. But it makes a great fun flick with a twist.

Many people don't like the ending. I thought the denouement was clever, but zipped by too fast to really get the beauty of the con. I wish they had given a few more minutes to the ending.

I really liked this movie. Typical Canadian tongue-in-cheek skepticism of fundamental Christianity with just a twinge of doubt. It flowed nicely and held my interest with a slight smile throughout. True fundamental Christians will probably not like this movie since it does not adhere to their strict party line, but rather is about an agnostic if not atheistic protagonist.

My only mild criticism is the ending where Casey is stoned by the townspeople, and is picked up and escorted away by Jansen ("Hockey") and the pastor. The next scene seems to be Casey and her Father talking about sister Meg leaving (dying) of her own choice, and they seemed to think everything would work out. They ignore the fact that she has no job, he has no place to sell his Christmas trees, her friend the pastor is leaving town, and nobody else other than Hockey likes her any more for her heresy. How they think they will be able to survive in that town is beyond me.

I was hoping for something more informed and informing, as well as exciting and compelling in this movie. Unfortunately, both my wife and I felt that it lacked some requisite elements of an enjoyable movie. It kept talking around things instead of actually coming out and saying what they were talking about. It was hard to follow at times because of the innuendo. It was almost like hearing sentences without subjects or action verbs. And very little was revealed about the actual nature of the financial crisis other than their formulas were broken. I wanted more.

The ending was weak to say the least. It just ended with the Spacey character burying his dead dog in his ex-wife's yard while she tells him that he doesn't live there anymore. Then into the credits with no real resolution. It may have been realistic, but not satisfying.

Compared to Fair Game or Inside Job, I felt this was considerably weaker given the strong cast members. Bad screenplay in my opinion.