At The Ritz, Cinema 2, 10am. I renewed membership for $17 and immediately burnt the accompanying freebie. Perhaps ten people total, all far older than me. I was somehow impatient to see this, perhaps because the Oscar bait has been so dire this year.
Clint Eastwood directs and stars. This is something of a counterpoint to Gran Torino: this time around he's incorrigible and his family irrelevant. We're in an Illinois of perpetual summer, and Clint is cultivating day lillies with help from some raffish and affable Latinos. Fifteen years later the internet has destroyed his business. You can infer the rest. Bradley Cooper is assured but banal; I don't understand why he got thanked by Larry Fishburne for busting the mule and not the hoods. I didn't recognise Andy Garcia. Taissa Farmiga is very weak in the role of the granddaughter; Alison Eastwood does better as the daughter. Clint is veiny and scrawny. He gets a tattoo in prison. He runs at the mouth in ways that would embarrass all of his previous characters. He's a good times sorta guy who goes for two women at once. The dykes on bikes take the heavy handedness in good humour. The story is not great: anyone younger than Eastwood might rush to judge the refurbishment of a veterans' drinking hole with drug money as completely authentic boomer behaviour.