{"id":1559,"date":"2007-04-29T21:53:45","date_gmt":"2007-04-30T01:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=1559"},"modified":"2007-04-29T21:53:45","modified_gmt":"2007-04-30T01:53:45","slug":"an-unfinished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/29\/an-unfinished\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unfinished Life (2005)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1661393h\"<\/a>I wasn\u2019t expecting much from \u201cAn Unfinished Life,\u201d that much is true. Not even Robert Redford can turn a bad movie into a watchable one. But after I was finished with it, I liked it. It\u2019s cheesy in some parts, and recycled, but in the end I\u2019d enjoyed spending almost two hours with these characters. Hell, even Morgan Freeman, whose character Mitch is just another variation on his character from \u201cMillion Dollar Baby,\u201d even was an interesting character. Freeman is able to be likable in basically anything he\u2019s in and he\u2019s become a rare commodity in Hollywood, which happens to be a damn shame. The man is too talented for narration, and appearing for five minutes as a mentor to someone.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, Hallstrom\u2019s picture is an entertaining and very sweet drama about old wounds. Everyone in the picture has an old wound that still hasn\u2019t healed, and the entrance of Jean into the life of Einar re-opens old wounds and grudges that he can\u2019t let go of. Robert Redford is fantastic as usual. The man is still a damn good actor, and he makes \u201cAn Unfinished Life\u201d worth the time spent. Iner is not a very likable character. He\u2019s bitter, obnoxious, and often times, just plain cruel, but Redford is able to convince us to give him a chance even if we never warm up to him. But the pure highlight of \u201cAn Unfinished Life\u201d is Becca Gardner who is just excellent as Lopez\u2019s daughter. She\u2019s probably one of the few child actors I can watch without wanting to beat with a shovel, and she plays off against Redford and Freeman better than Lopez. She\u2019s adorable, and her character is utterly fascinating. Her relationship with Redford\u2019s character helps to fuel the movie and keep it going through its typical conventions and she\u2019s a dynamo.<\/p>\n

I wish she\u2019d been the main character along with Einar. Hallstrom posits a beautiful movie with amazing landscapes, and I enjoyed \u201cAn Unfinished Life\u201d even with its flaws. Jennifer Lopez? Hi, it\u2019s a former fan of yours. Did I say fan? I worshipped you. I had books of pictures with you, I had a huge poster of yours, and I just dreamed of you all the time. And then once you dated P. Diddy Daddy Doo, whatever the hell his name is, I lost interest. And now I can finally see. You\u2019re a terrible actress. Did I say terrible? Every time you were on screen, you proved you\u2019re only famous because of your looks and that nice rump you sport. You couldn\u2019t handle playing off of Robert Redford, I\u2019m sorry. You couldn\u2019t even handle playing off of Josh Lucas. It\u2019s true, you know. You\u2019re horrible. Every time you were on screen, I was in agony, and my sister who sat next to me not paying attention even remarked how horrible you were. Why are you in this movie? Why don\u2019t we have someone better like Sarah Polley? I don\u2019t know, and personally I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re a horrible actress, and you brought \u201cAn Unfinished Life\u201d to a stand still every time you were on screen. I hope you enjoyed working with Redford, because it\u2019s the closest you\u2019ll get to an Oscar. Meanwhile, \u201cAn Unfinished Life\u201d is nothing but a Hallmark movie with a great cast, pure and simple. It\u2019s about as clich\u00e9 and formula as a greeting card, and worst yet, it was predictable. It was so predictable in fact, I guess everything that would happen an hour before. Grandpa would soften up to his granddaughter, the abusive boyfriend would follow Jean, Jean in her one-dimensional personality would fall for the sheriff, and yes, eventually Mitch would confront his demon. Give me something to be surprised about, next time Sure, it\u2019s a glorified Hallmark movie with a great cast, but in spite of it all, \u201cAn Unfinished Life\u201d struck a chord with me. The great cast pull in very good performances, and the story is sweet, even if Jennifer Lopez brings it all to a screeching halt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wasn\u2019t expecting much from \u201cAn Unfinished Life,\u201d that much is true. Not even Robert Redford can turn a bad movie into a watchable one. But after I was finished with it, I liked it. It\u2019s cheesy in some parts, and recycled, but in the end I\u2019d enjoyed spending almost two hours with these characters. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[50,302,857,874,1087],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-a","tag-drama","tag-robert-redford","tag-romance","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}