MovieChat Forums > Silver City (2004) Discussion > Huge disappointment...

Huge disappointment...


OK spoiler warning...

I'm genuinely surprised that people thought this was a decent movie. I found it incredibly boring and completely flat. Sitting through this movie felt more like watching the filming of a movie rather than an actual story with actors that believed in it. The supposed character development was so forced and contrived that I could never get into the story however hard I tried. It made me cringe to see Danny Huston try to portray an investigator/detective/reporter. How were we supposed to react to him? I guess we were supposed to accept the gratuitous and silly sounding self-descriptive and obvious lines the actors spit out as a satisfactory substitute for actual story and performance. His goofy smile, while probably not his fault, belied any credibility his character tried to develop. When he finally reached that point of credibility (almost at the very end), the writers made him lose it by actually making him naive enough to trust the sheriff. Of course, that was just one of the many examples of the awful acting and writing combinations that caused this train wreck of a movie. The only decent performances in this film were Daryl Hannah as a doped-up bimbo and Richard Dreyfus as an arrogant jerk.

When a writer tries to create too many loops and intertwine too many clever twists without engaging the audience first, the story becomes too transparent and is made to seem that it is being too clever for its own good. The faint suggestion of an ending is a slap in the face (and a cop-out by the director) to those who sat through this movie for 2 hours and they deserved something more solid.

I don't have a problem with a cynical or satirical movie. The problem I have is when people are too cowardly to follow through and decide to bail and fall back on either cheap laughs or cheap emotions. If you try to make the cynicism too cute, like in this movie, or temper it with hollow sentimentality, a la The Contender, then you betray your very message. One thing I must applaud about this movie was how it was able to fool so many recognized actors and actresses into attaching their names to this mess.

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damn straight man,.... couldnt agree more

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hey, i'll do you one better: SILVER CITY IS THE ABSOLUTE ALL-TIME WORST MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN!!! PERIOD!!! THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONTAINS TOO FEW WORDS TO ADEQUATELY EXPRESS THE SHEER AWEFULNESS OF IT!!! DEAR GOD THIS MOVIE WAS BAD!!!
seriously though. it's crap. keep in mind that i'm a liberal and probably agree with every one of its political ideas (the ones that were fleshed out, which weren't many). there were so many faults to it, i don't even know where to start. this thing was "plan nine from outer space" bad. hell, worse, because at least that movie was laughably bad. this movie just made me angry; angry at myself for sitting through it (i actually walked out FIVE MINUTES before the end. i just couldn't take it any more), angry at the actors who were in it, but most of all, angry at john sayles for putting this smug PIECE OF *beep* out there. but i don't want to rant anymore than i already have, so let me just say why i think it should be avoided like typhoid mary.
01) danny huston. hands down the worst performance i've ever seen. EVER. maybe the worst performance in the history of cinema (i say this with no hyperbole). this is keanu reeves bad. actually reeves is A FAR BETTER ACTOR than danny huston. virtually any actor or actress alive would've been better at that role. he spends so much time grinning like a drooling baboon ('i can't believe they put me in a movie') i actually became physically ill whenever he showed up on screen.
02) everyone else in it, except for chris cooper. a lot of good actors were in this (HOW???????), so i can only conclude that their mediocre performances were a result of...
03) the script. words fail me, here. plodding, pointless, unfocused, smirking, scattershot, infantile, aesthetically offensive, none of these comes close to expressing how bad it was. completely plotless, it lurched from one ill-formed idea to the next. the main story, to the extent that there was one, had NOTHING to do with the chris cooper scenes. it's almost like they were from two different movies. and how cynical is sayles to think that, because his politics are as progressive as his audience, no one's supposed to notice? like, i'm sure, everyone who went to see this, i was expecting to see a witty satire on the bush family. instead i got: illegal immagrints, enviromental irresponsibility, a half-assed romance (maria bello and danny huston? riiiiight...), and about three hours of lecturing with five minutes of a bush parody thrown in. let me tell you something about script-writing. when one charactor says to another 'tell me about so-and-so', and then gets a twenty-minute history of that person, complete with family tree and psychological analysis, it's a bad script. SHOW US, don't TELL US. if you have to explain it, you've done a bad job. i'd say about ninety-nine percent of the dialogue falls into this category. this is amateur, first-draft type stuff. the movie is basically danny huston grinning while an endless succession of famous and semi-famous people tell him needless information, which does nothing to illuminate the plot or the theme. NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS MOVIE. all sound, no fury, signifying nothing.
THIS MOVIE WAS AN ABOMINATION!!!

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I agree with your first point. danny huston was worse than the worst. But I think u are being a bit too harsh though. The movie wasnt too bad. The script took quite some liberties but despite that I liked the movie. I would rate it 6.5/10.

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I completely agree ernie6446.

It seemed like there were endless sub-plots just sprouting up throughout the movie. It not only makes it tough trying to keep up with what's going on, but worst of all IT MAKES IT BORING!!!

What a waste of time and effort by not only me for watching the movie but also by some pretty good actors who've played in it!

I couldn't help but thinking this is the type of movie you'd see being made in the 1980s that would be quickly forgotten until it is re-aired on network television years later.

Sometimes it felt like I was watching some documentary, the only thing that swayed me from that thought is the fact that documentaries are generally far more interesting than this pathetic movie.

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Everyone who was posted in this thread seems to hate the slow, possibly meandering and very dense pace of this film. One has to wonder if any of you have ever seen a John Sayles movie before? I highly doubt that you have, considering that most of his films work in this manner, with ensemble casts tackling very large and not easily digested or solved issues. Even in 1984 when Sayles wrote and directed campy "fish out of water" alien flick, it contained social and political commentary. It is true that Sayles' films are an acquired taste--am not demeaning anyone here--and it takes time to appreciate the film as a whole. That is, one must see the issues being addressed, the individual actor's performances, the cinematography, and all the other components that can create an amazing work. "Stealth" it is not, "Collateral" it is not. As an essay on politics and the forces that drive our country and countrymen to the actions they take, this is a brilliant film.

I will add one additional note. Look at the cast, at all the names you recognise. Many people made a point of this. Search the cast of other films. Chris Cooper and David Straithairn (recently up for all manner of accolades) have been in at least half of his films. If he is such a wretched writer and horrible director, why are so many so eager to work with him?

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you dont need to see sayles other movies to like this movie,it just wasnt that good to be honest.i have been looking forward to this movie for a long time,eventually i bought it @ 32 euros which was a total rip off.
really disappointed in it.
also just because actors like cooper and straithairn are working with him doesnt make him a good director or writer,there could be so many other reasons why they do it.

definitly would not recommend this movie,let alone buying it for 32euros

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also just because actors like cooper and straithairn are working with him doesnt make him a good director or writer,there could be so many other reasons why they do it.

Like what?? The fact is, many actors do want to work with Sayles because they consider him to be a good writer and director.

I liked this movie for the issues it raises. Not Sayles at his best, but good at creating a tapestry of many different characters.

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So much was going on in the movie, I couldn't keep track and it's not like I can't keep more than one thought in my head at a time, it was just too convoluted. I didn't care about any of the characters or what they did or didn't do. At the end I just thought wtf???? Who cares?

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Huge disappointment says it all for me.

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I found Danny Huston's role so goofy and frat boyish. I never really bonded with the character. I found him immature and rather rash. The movie was too boring, and yet was trying to do too much. This movie is a great disappointment compared to Sayles' other works - The River Wild, Matawan, Eight Men Out, and Passion Fish. All of these great films were very engaging and had good plots. This movie was terribly confusing and boring.

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Disagree respectfully. I found this film quite different from the typical Hollywood machine formula (which includes a very narrow range for a type of performance from actors) but intelligent and engaging. I like that Sayles expects his audience to work. I don't want every film I see to be like that, but it's sure a breath of fresh of air.

Audiences 'deserve' something solid at the end? Yeah, if they haven't graduated from Hollywood Formula to real food. Life isn't solid at the end, situations like the one portrayed do not tie up neatly after two hours, and the bravest and most talented are the only ones who dare to show that.

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