It's hard to find a Jack Nicholson movie where he acts so poorly that it bothers the viewer. But here is the needle in the haystack.
Nicholson's performance is overacted, uninspired, and adolescent. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Anjelica Huston seems to follow suit! It's almost as if there was a bad-acting virus on the set.
However one actor who had apparently been vaccinated was David Morse. This is probably the one and only bright spot in the movie. Morse is fantastic. His portrayal of John Booth is convincing, multi-dimensional, and consistent. It is twice as amazing that Morse was able to pull off such an impressive job when one considers that he had to play off the pitiful Nicholson. Robin Wright did give Morse at least something to work with as her performance was fairly good, although hampered by the story...
..which brings us to the worst aspect of the movie--the screenplay. Imagine a story called, "The hammer hits the nail," where viewers are forced to watch an ultra-slo-mo of a hammer coming down on a nail, periodically broken up by sporadic, unnecessary banter, and you have this in a nutshell. The story is painfully predictable, and morbidly slow-moving. One walks away saying, "That was it? But I already knew that." The actual story should only take about 5 minutes. The rest is filler. And bad filler.
The climax of the movie (if one can call it that) is a pathetically unrealistic chase scene where the out-of-shape, 50-something, smoking alcoholic character played by Nicholson out runs the young, muscular and fit Morse over a distance of some 3 miles or so (although it seems like 20 miles to the viewer). Nothing is given away by this description however, since most viewers already know how a movie like this will end.
The title of the film, "The Crossing Guard" is of course irrelevant to all but self-described film experts who have infinite time and desire to conjure up the "real" meaning of films and teach them to the rest of us. However, it most likely refers to the tragic failure of a talent-guard to catch this script before it made it to production.
Nicholson's performance is overacted, uninspired, and adolescent. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Anjelica Huston seems to follow suit! It's almost as if there was a bad-acting virus on the set.
However one actor who had apparently been vaccinated was David Morse. This is probably the one and only bright spot in the movie. Morse is fantastic. His portrayal of John Booth is convincing, multi-dimensional, and consistent. It is twice as amazing that Morse was able to pull off such an impressive job when one considers that he had to play off the pitiful Nicholson. Robin Wright did give Morse at least something to work with as her performance was fairly good, although hampered by the story...
..which brings us to the worst aspect of the movie--the screenplay. Imagine a story called, "The hammer hits the nail," where viewers are forced to watch an ultra-slo-mo of a hammer coming down on a nail, periodically broken up by sporadic, unnecessary banter, and you have this in a nutshell. The story is painfully predictable, and morbidly slow-moving. One walks away saying, "That was it? But I already knew that." The actual story should only take about 5 minutes. The rest is filler. And bad filler.
The climax of the movie (if one can call it that) is a pathetically unrealistic chase scene where the out-of-shape, 50-something, smoking alcoholic character played by Nicholson out runs the young, muscular and fit Morse over a distance of some 3 miles or so (although it seems like 20 miles to the viewer). Nothing is given away by this description however, since most viewers already know how a movie like this will end.
The title of the film, "The Crossing Guard" is of course irrelevant to all but self-described film experts who have infinite time and desire to conjure up the "real" meaning of films and teach them to the rest of us. However, it most likely refers to the tragic failure of a talent-guard to catch this script before it made it to production.