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That's not exactly a secret and here's another entry: a decent human drama attempting to be real, that suffers critically simply for that description and the words decent and real.

There's so much to like in this movie and those things are all about relationships - real ones, human ones; and technology, relativity, and things virtual have little play in the story whatsoever. Perhaps thats why this movie was "Booed" at the Cannes Film Festival (so little wonder I like the film).

McConaughey's acting out a broken-hearted man is certainly passable as is Naomi Watts depiction of a wife, disappointed in her dream life having turned out less than her ideal.

The film is like hundreds of good movies, you walk away thinking "you know, that could have been great if...". There are many little, silly unrealistic actions and dialogue faults of course. The biggest fail is flashback scenes that were critical, frankly core to the story, that were just written (screen play writing) badly. The real-time scenes had to explain the flashbacks situational facts rather than embellish on their emotional outcomes. Too bad too as there is one moment in flashback that, while not unprecedented in story telling, could and would have been extremely powerful had the writing been more carefully attended to.

Still, the movie has terrific appeal in that it compares to a catalog of other movies in modernity where most suffer from the production teams collective hang up over who and how we ought to be instead of who and how we are.

The Good: Other reviews have said it. It's a feel good movie, low budget, low-mid pack actors. Yet the story line just works. Predictable? Of course.

But the anti-hero, dark, mind bending, psychobabble, check all the boxes even if you have to churn the dialogue (who cares about dialogue?) out with a word salad generator movies are just over played circa 2022. We can get all the reality TV documentary in real-time by flipping through the news media channels.

The bad: Actually, the dialogue isn't that great. Ugh. It tries to be honest but it's just not well written. I blame the director (easy since he's credited as writer) for that. No excuses like "I had to work with what I had".

The Afghanistan sequences we so unrealistic it was painful. OK. That needed a bigger budget to pull off, but there are cinematic tricks to overcome that. The fact of the main character Marshall's experiences in Afghanistan were important to the plot line, but that could have been conveyed without what ended up cheesy mailed-in scenes.

Marshall's wife Sophie was the worst. First she gives an overstated, thus unrealistic performance in objecting to Marshall racing again, then after a rather weak talking to by her father-in-law (a point in the movie the dialogue need to be emotionally strong) she pivots on a dime to give an equally overstated performance in support of Marshall's return to racing. Allison Paige doesn't appear to be a terrible actress, she was following the written lines and directed on their delivery. There was so much emotional and female audience identifiable red-meat possible in that character that got lost in what left me head-scratching.

Aki Afshar played Cyrus and while his dialogue was sometime fair and sometimes idiotic, I actually saw him as a pretty darn good actor. Likeable and believable when given the chance. I don't know what else he's done but I really could see pulling off some fine acting in a bigger role in a bigger film.

As overstated as the Sophie character was, the lead character Marshall was flat out dull. Perhaps that wasn't the writer/director's fault. Who knows - we don't see the original script after all. But sheesh.

Then other small stuff like the "Walker brothers" open mockery that. Then I guess the movie ran out of time to show how the Walkers ditched Tony (Panterra) such that the fact of it came out of nowhere.

I won't bag on Tony Panterra's acting. He's not expected to be Jack Nicholson playing Tony Panterra. But having his character go from jackass to simply being misunderstood without something motivating it spells cheesy movie and was unfair to both the character and the man playing himself.

I'm not panning this film. I really liked it because it was more fun and simply better than I expected. Hey I gave it 8 stars! And I will probably check out another Alex. Ranavilelo film that when my head's worn out and I'm in the mood for something easy and expected yet at least not going to insult.

I could have watched Bennett's War with my kids and we'd all enjoy it. Frankly that alone justifies an 8 star rating these days,

It's characters are completely putrid and decadent and sober and down to Earth. The lines are idiotic and then perfect. It turns you off then grabs you hard. These characters are completely unlikable and they are you.

It's a show of extremes - reality to the extreme. Then you suddenly realize the acting is just terrific.

I love this show. My wife and I started to binge-watch it until we found the episodes just too wrenching to take another without recovering first,

It's just brilliant, init?

The acting was mostly poor but the direction and production were what was in witness protection with this movie. The dialogue is downright awful and there are so many details of credulity strained I can't list them it was so non-stop. It takes a well written story to make a compelling movie. This was clearly thrown together and by an apparent amateur to boot.

The concept was potentially interesting, but it fell apart early in the movie. Then the victim turns out to be a second perp, a hitman (woman) who becomes hellbent on beating the other hitman to the target, for no reason but what? Male ego? Good grief.

This is the worst movie I've seen in a good long while.

Besides being stupid, and not Constitutional, it's extremely un-funny. When you want un-funny, invite Candice Bergen in to suck it out of the script. Mission accomplished.

If you are in the mood for something other than action or suspense; if you're tired of feeling like you're being condescended to or studying an ideology; if you're in the mood to let a movie take you somewhere good, smile a little, then this is a good movie to give you a rest from Hollywood.

Cheesy movie, sure. But quite nicely done. Kudos to the cast, to Kathy Bates and especially to the director.