Fantastic!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I admit to being a bit of a fan of the work of Stephen King, as such I am fully aware that there are many adaptations of his work out there that are less than average. Despite this, I live in hope that someday somebody will make a decent fist of one of his stories again. Unfortunately, this one goes on the 'below par' pile… along with too many others I'm afraid. I must say I haven't read the story on which this one is based, but, knowing Mr. King, I'm sure it works perfectly well on the page. More of my thoughts after this brief summary.A schoolteacher, Robinson, is devastated when his wife, Elizabeth, is murdered by crime boss Dolan. She had witnessed several murders committed by Dolan whilst out riding one day and ended up paying the ultimate price. With vengeance on his mind, Robinson gets himself a gun and stakes out Dolan for a long time. Thinking the time is right he prepares to kill him but a hit by a rival gang puts paid to his ambitions and demonstrates that Dolan's car, a tripped out Cadillac is one tough motor vehicle! Eventually a plan forms in Robinson's mind, one which will involve Dolan's Cadillac.There are elements of this film I liked, the fact that Robinson is haunted by visions of his wife after her death was a nice device. Shame they didn't use it to its full potential. There were a couple of moments of humour in there, but not enough to give this film a boost it needed. Performance-wise, Christian Slater did an excellent job as Dolan, he really knows how to 'chew the furniture' when required. Wes Bentley was also pretty good as Robinson and finally, although she didn't have an awful lot to do, Emmanuelle Vaugier did a decent job as Elizabeth.I do enjoy a decent revenge thriller but unfortunately this one is a bit of a let-down. The plot loses a lot of steam very quickly and never really recovers. It's a shame really because this one had some potential, but I can see why it went straight to DVD. Over all, despite a couple of decent performances, this one fails to live up to its potential… NOT recommended.My Score: 4.7/10

While Emmanuelle Vaugier's doomed teacher Elizabeth asks her class whether it is ever acceptable to break the law, her husband Robinson (Wes Bentley), who is also a teacher, shows his class a gold pocket watch that once belonged to his immigrant father who helped to build America's railways. Thus the themes of this direct-to-video adaptation of a Stephen King short story are perfunctorily established. On the surface, the film appears to confirm that, yes, it is OK to break the law if the crime in question is an act of vengeance towards the exuberantly sleazy mobster (Christian Slater) who has blown up your wife - and, no, it's not acceptable to exploit migrant labour (or bury them in the desert).A different, better, film, might have made more of the fact that, by exacting his revenge the grief-stricken Robinson becomes as much - if not more - of a monster than the mobster Dolan, and you might be forgiven for believing this is what the film attempts to do as it follows in ponderous detail Robinson's act of physical and mental torture. However, given that the sixty minutes that precede this sequence are equally ponderous, you just know that all we're watching is a writer and director attempting to pad out a short story to a feature-length running time. Therefore, we don't share Robinson's near hysterical euphoria at the end of the film, and almost feel sympathy for the entombed gangster as the final paving slab is put in place.The movie's probably worth watching only for Christian Slater's powerhouse performance as Dolan, a violent gangster with a psychotic intelligence that inspires him to wax lyrical over the most unlikely subjects.

Elizabeth witnesses the execution of two coyotes and an illegal immigrant by the human trafficker Jimmy Dolan and decides to report the incident to the police.However, she loses her cellular and Dolan finds it, tracks her address down and threatens her.Elizabeth goes to the FBI with Robinson and they move to a safe house under the protection of two agents.When Elizabeth sneaks from the house to buy pregnancy tests, her car explodes and she dies.Robinson decides to avenge Elizabeth's death....Another year and another King adaptation. This one borderlines the good and the average. Slater who hasn't aged since Kuffs, is the main draw here, whilst he doesn't really fit the bad guy role, there is some anarchy to be enjoyed in his rantings.But Bentley, proves that American Beauty was a one ff, as he is as wooden as ever before, spending the majority fthe film looking perplexed and imitating his life in the 2000's. He brings the film down and and causes scenes that should be intense, to be lethargic and overdrawn.The script is unintentionally funny with some great one liners, and the set up of revenge is executed greatly, but we have to endure Bentley for an hour to get to it.As I have pointed out, if you are a Slater fan, it's a great showboat for him, but all in all, it's a pretty, but pointless affair.

As a lifelong reader of Stephen King, I got this on-sale-for-five-bucks-at-redbox movie expecting an epic flop. I didn't even realize they'd made a movie out of what is (I shiite thee not) one of my top 3 favorite Stephen King stories of all time, but I saw it had Christian Slater and Blackheart from Ghost Rider and...gravy.Honestly, I bought the movie thinking that Slater was the protagonist, so imagine my shock when I found out he was playing Dolan. When I read the story as a kid, I think I imagined Dolan as more of a Robert DiNiro, Al Pacino or even Mickey Rourke. Given those biases, I really had a hard time buying Slater as Dolan. At first. However, I really saw him come into his own in those scenes where he's looking at the girls, the very end in the Caddy and some of his sleazier moments. Still, I think that Slater was a little too young-looking to portray a gangster.I'll agree with most other reviewer's assertions that the last third was the best part. But I will add that even if the rest of the movie completely sucked, it was still worth it to see those two play out the final scene that Stephen King painted years ago. The scenes where Richardson stood screaming at his shredded gloves was right out of my imagination. Fantastic.In short, I give about 15 minutes of this movie a 4 and the rest a 9, so it averages out to an eight. Definitely worth the $5 I paid for it by easily a factor of four.