It's a strange little film, going between father-son bonding moments and brutal mafia-style executions.
Tom Hanks is a gun-for-hire working for a mobster played by Paul Newman. His oldest son Michael has always been a little suspicious of what exactly it was his father did for a living. So one day decides to sneak into his father's car to see just exactly what it is he does.
Michael Witnesses his father and some other whack-job kill a random guy for making a stink about their boss.
Afterwards they discover their being watched and go out to investigate. Only to discover that it's Tom's son.
This causes a myriad of different problems and leads to an attentive execution both on Tom Hanks and his family. Unfortunately his wife and youngest son or killed why is oldest son was lucky enough to survive.
now Tom and his son Michael travel to Chicago and hope that they can convince some of the higher-ups at the mafia to let Tom Hanks kill the guy who killed his wife and kid. But it seems they're unwilling to give up this information and inform him to move on with his life. Afterwards they even send a Hitman after run to try and kill him.
So Tom decides the only way he's going to get at the mafia is by stealing their money. He teaches his son how to drive a car and the two of them go all over Chicago robbing every bank they can find. And only stealing money that belongs the mafia.
It's during this time that the movie takes something of a tonal shift. It goes from a dire situation in which a family has been desecrated and almost destroyed and then transfers over to a kind of father and son bank heist comedic extravaganza.
The movie after this point is just Tom and his son avoiding one hit man while trying to kill someone themselves. Tom inevitably will kill just about everyone associated with his old gang get revenge for the murder of his wife and younger son and then get shot himself by one particularly crazy Hit man who has an obsession with photographing the people he kills.
It's one of those films you could see them easily expanding on and adding a whole whack of extra story elements too. Some of what you may even want them to have, like say more character interaction between the kid and Tom Hanks. Especially after the death of their significant others. But then at the same time anything you add to the film would just drag it down to make it overly long.
It's a perfectly fine solid flick. The acting is all good, camera work is solid and the music it does its job. It's not all that rememberable a soundtrack. It's just kind of light Orchestra music that sounds like it belongs more in the Forrest Gump movie.
It's one of those middle-of-the-road films, you'll see it on TV playing sometimes or you look at the box art on a DVD case in a store somewhere and it doesn't really dry tension to itself. Doesn't really draw too much attention to itself.
Comments
Post a Comment