Sadly Over-hyped

Excellent, a Must See

An action-packed slog

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie might have been enjoyable if the dialog was intelligible but between the marble mouthed delivery of most of the male cast and the intrusive background noise it was nearly impossible to follow what the characters were saying.I appreciate the chiaroscuro aspects of the photography but this film takes noir into the heart of darkness. A good part of the action and some critical scenes are shot under the light of the new moon.When there is no light at all I suppose there's no need for players, sets or crew except for the sound people and we've already dealt with them.

The Irish in Hell's Kitchen, New York, maybe but rather in Satan's brine of a brain. Five kids swear to be friends forever but they want to get the moon without working their backside too hard. So they do small mediocre little deals under the complacent and tolerant eyes of the local Irish gang-leader and the local Irish police inspector. What happens is the natural consequence of that mediocrity. One of the five will one day dream big and go to the gang-leader who will see him as a competitor, so the gang-leader will trick him into a complete funky flunk and one will be killed by another, and a third one will commit suicide and a fourth one will have to have a bloody fight with the gang-leader under the protective eye of the cop for the cop finally to clean up the place in the most ineffective way possible: by terminating the gangster with a good old police bullet. And the other tricked one will finally pass justice over himself and jump from the roof. One will survive happily married and the other one will escape with the sister of the first one who got killed. More melodramatic you die. Sickening by excess. This vision of Irish crime or Irish police work or even Irish love does not compare with the nearly mundane bel canto of the mafia, or the rustic gory pitiless vociferations of the Russian or the Georgian mafias, or even the sly treacherous vicious praying mills of those who lock themselves in some kind of exclusive religion, no matter which, Christians Born Again or Islamic Fundamentalism or yoga transcendentalism. The film in other words sounds pretty critical of the Irish, if not plainly racist towards them: they are not even able to be good gangsters exploiting their brothers and sisters.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Yes, the cast and the movie are damn good. I just watched it a few days ago, not expecting much, but I was pretty surprised. Interesting engrossing story, great acting, this is a little cheaply made but well directed and superbly played sleeper, it will get its followers.NOT as good as STATE OF GRACE, but also not that much worse.Recently I saw for example the re-make of ASSAULT ON PRECINT 13, which is utterly awful, as worse as it can get.Compared to junk like this ONE EYED KING is a real treat, something to look out for and certainly enjoy.I even found it better - because of being more realistic - than the high-speed Marin Scorsese junk "THE DEPARTED", which won Oscars for delivering hardly anything.Nice little gem, this ONE EYED KING !

This movie came out on 2001 but it just has been released on video in 2004.William Baldwin plays a guy who wants to bring his low level gangster buddies back to reality like having a wife or children, but instead his friends deal drugs and commit other crimes under the watch of Holly (Armand Assante)This is a pretty good movie, but it does have weaknesses like: The editing of some scenes (most of the flashbacks) come at the wrong time and it's confusing. Other that that all the performances are pretty decent. The stand out is Armand Assante as Holly. Holly seems like a nice guy but if you double cross him he'll kill you in a heartbeat. Assante does an excellent job, bringing out the psycho aspects of the character. Overall, the movie is worth seeing.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com