Ed's Review Dot Com

Fox 2000 Pictures, Temple Hill Entertainment,

Lolita Davidovich, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda, Jack Huston, Scott Eastwood, Oona Chaplin

Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson) is a bright college student with big plans and goals in the art world. Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood) is a talented rodeo bull rider who was recently badly injured, but is looking for a huge comeback. But his doctors insist he should not be riding anymore. As sparks fly between the very different lovers, they find that opposites attract. But when they come upon an accident and Luke rescues the elderly man Ira Levinson (Alan Alda) from the car, they form a friendship. From this point on the tales intertwine in typical Nicholas Sparks fashion to tell the two stories.

Well, I must admit that I’ve seen a couple films based upon Nicholas Sparks books, and one thing for sure is that they’re all in the same style. So is this one with so many moments that feel like “The Notebook” that it’s remarkable. Still, it’s a good solid story, and two romantic tales for the price of one. Seriously, this is a chick flick. There’s no other way to put it. But I was impressed with the whole story. There was lots of rodeo action which helped keep my interest up. I’ve never really been sure what makes people want to do that. Really, there’s a lot of intense conflict to resolve and bring together to a fitting ending to the story. The performances are really good, and the script is really well done, so all in all it was a pretty interesting film. This is one I can recommend highly.

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Columbia Pictures, Annapurna Pictures, Atlas Entertainment,

Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, Louis C.K., Jack Huston, Michael Peña, Shea Whigham, Alessandro Nivola, Elisabeth Röhm, Paul Herman, Saïd Taghmaoui, Matthew Russell, Thomas Matthews, Adrian Martinez, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Camp

The story of Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and a fictionalized account of the early 1980’s ABSCAM scandal. Rosenfeld is a crook and a con man, but he’s roped into to trapping some government officials into bribery and crime with the help of a fake sheik and a bunch of other characters.

I can remember hearing about the ABSCAM scandals back in the day. It was New Jersey and Pennsylvania where it happened, and it involved hours and hours of secretly filmed meeting with congressional leaders and the like. It seemed to fill the news, but truthfully I was never really caught up in the real story. This film has a great array of wonderful stars. But like the real story, this movie just didn’t catch me. I wasn’t impressed with the performance of any of the actors, and it all was mostly boring to me. This film received a lot of buzz in awards season last year, probably mostly because of the dream cast, but I just couldn’t get into the story and found myself daydreaming away. Nothing really jumped out and caught me, and I was not roped in. It just was a waste of time. I really didn’t enjoy it very much, and as a result, I didn’t get much out of the story. Afterward I decided to research the ABSCAM scandal to see if I could make some sense out of the movie, and quit reading half way through the article too. This is a missed opportunity in my humble opinion, and it just did not reach out to me. I could have skipped this one.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog