Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The trailer for this movie does not do it justice. They must have had a bad splice day because when I watched it it seemed as if it might be a little melodramatic. It was most certainly a poorly done trailer. The movie itself is high caliber. Link (Gibson) plays the down and out recovering ex con living in the middle of no where with a community of recovering addicts. He is a tattoo artist that has been looking for his lost daughter. Lydia (Moriarty),the daughter, is on the run after killing her boyfriend who is a well connected family member of a drug cartel . After she contacts him, Link is compelled to help her but doesn't realize how deep she is in over her head. The movie builds in intensity to the final confrontation that pulls Link back into his old ways. With a couple of good supporting actors and actresses including William H Macy who plays Kirby, Link's sponsor, this movie steams and boils with its own, old school beat. I read several reviews that spoke of this movie being a return to a time with actual character development and I felt that too. Some of the scenes had a subtle rawness to them that might seem a little contrived but the movie always seems to resolve itself and Gibson's acting... the cool, casual but determined 'Road Warrior' grit with a gasoline flavor... carries it along nicely. Not his best movie but given what we have seen more recently and given what we expect of him because of his past, I would put it up in his top ten easily because it is a return to the Mel we love and the movie smacks of a personal cry for redemption. Rated R for copious amounts of language and some drug use this movie had zero sex in it. Usually you would see a token strip club scene in a movie like this but they did not feel the necessity to show any gratuitous flesh. This added to the sense of a return to innocence for both Link and Lydia as the story truly is a fairy tale reunion of father and daughter with full blown catharsis baked right in. Rent it, own it... you will at the bare minimum be entertained and you might love it. If you are a true Mel Gibson fan it will not let you down. I gave it a five star rating because Mel deserves it.