Uneven

I get that this movie jumped on the "Home Alone" bandwagon of kids outwitting/attacking adults, but Dutch was way too uneven in it's execution.

The main culprit (in the movie) for this is Dutch himself. I found the contrast between his dopey "why me?" attitude (cemented by the opening animated logo) and his frequent and sincere threats of violence to be almost schizo and quite chilling.

It was almost as if the character had been conceived by two completely different writers. One concentrating on his childish side and the other on his realistic, adult side. And then they were so different, they couldn't get them to mesh...so they just left it as is.

I like Ed O'Neill and I understand that he's quite a big, imposing guy.

But the bit at the end when he hit Doyle's Dad was more ugly than slapstick. Especially as he had already explained (in a roundabout way) that the last guy he hit suffered permanent brain damage. The Dad was a git but I ended up feeling sickened slightly by that attack.

I would have thought, also, that Doyle's Dad would have enough evidence (ie the indent of Dutch's pinky ring on his forehead) to take him to court for GBH.

I would have.



"Not The Gold!!" - Augustus Steranko.