My mother and Robert Redford were born on August 18, 1936. As each approaches their 83rd birthday, Mom looks as though she's going on 73 while Redford looks as though he's going on 183! As I watched this last night, I was distracted constantly by the patchwork quilt which is now his once impossibly-gorgeous visage, his slovenly sideburns, and his shriveled-up physique to the point where I kept asking myself: What the HELL happened to him?!
When the "hero" of your opus is anything but, then you better give the audience at least one compelling reason to be invested in him; Redford's vanity project fails miserably. Bad enough it takes the usual liberties (Forrest Tucker - NO, not the guy from "F Troop" - was living in a retirement home in Florida when he pulled his final jobs; none of his wives or children knew about his shenanigans; he escaped San Quentin with two other inmates; the real Jewel was a Miami shipping heiress and Tucker's 3rd wife), we never learn a thing about him. Why did he pursue a criminal career the way other people pursue an actual career? Did he have Mommy issues? Was he exacting some bizarre revenge? Was he dropped on his head as a child one too many times? I didn't know nor did I care.
Where this lost me was how utterly-inept the film's Javert is. How did he NOT realize Jean Valjean was holding up the bank WHILE HE WAS THERE?! As if to make up for dropping the ball big-time, Javert - egged on by the Mrs. - launches a Les Misérables-like pursuit of Valjean, complete with having his kids follow Valjean's trail by pressing thumb-tacks into a map.
The thing which was impossible to ignore is how "woke" this is: Mrs. Javert; Javert's kids; Javert's partner; Valjean's cohort; a sheriff Javert talks to; and the bank exec Valjean tries to sweet-talk into letting him pay off Fantine's mortgage are black. Yet its "wokeness" goes only so far: none of the other Keystone Cops are Latino, Asian or Native American; ditto, Valjean's victims. And how ironic that the über-"woke" Redford lets his equally-"woke" writer/director David Lowery slip into a scene Javert's daughter reading her Get Well letter to then-President Reagan, thanking him for "making America safe"! All this "woke" accomplishes is to emphasize how forced, contrived, and condescending the whole enterprise is.
We never even learn if the cops ever found Valjean's ill-gotten booty. Speaking of, why didn't he retrieve said booty before he tried to sweet-talk the bank exec instead of telling her that he didn't have the money? At this point, I half-expected him to "get" the money by robbing the bank. But no such luck.
Near the end, The Sundance Kid pulls a Horse Whisperer (or a Jeremiah Johnson), and swipes one of Fantine's horses to attempt a getaway (how he knows how to saddle, bridle, and ride a horse is not for us lesser minds to ponder). I suppose we ought to just be grateful we were not subjected to Valjean and Fantine (aka Sissy Spacek) getting jiggy with it.
This Forrest Tucker needs to go back to F Troop!
When the "hero" of your opus is anything but, then you better give the audience at least one compelling reason to be invested in him; Redford's vanity project fails miserably. Bad enough it takes the usual liberties (Forrest Tucker - NO, not the guy from "F Troop" - was living in a retirement home in Florida when he pulled his final jobs; none of his wives or children knew about his shenanigans; he escaped San Quentin with two other inmates; the real Jewel was a Miami shipping heiress and Tucker's 3rd wife), we never learn a thing about him. Why did he pursue a criminal career the way other people pursue an actual career? Did he have Mommy issues? Was he exacting some bizarre revenge? Was he dropped on his head as a child one too many times? I didn't know nor did I care.
Where this lost me was how utterly-inept the film's Javert is. How did he NOT realize Jean Valjean was holding up the bank WHILE HE WAS THERE?! As if to make up for dropping the ball big-time, Javert - egged on by the Mrs. - launches a Les Misérables-like pursuit of Valjean, complete with having his kids follow Valjean's trail by pressing thumb-tacks into a map.
The thing which was impossible to ignore is how "woke" this is: Mrs. Javert; Javert's kids; Javert's partner; Valjean's cohort; a sheriff Javert talks to; and the bank exec Valjean tries to sweet-talk into letting him pay off Fantine's mortgage are black. Yet its "wokeness" goes only so far: none of the other Keystone Cops are Latino, Asian or Native American; ditto, Valjean's victims. And how ironic that the über-"woke" Redford lets his equally-"woke" writer/director David Lowery slip into a scene Javert's daughter reading her Get Well letter to then-President Reagan, thanking him for "making America safe"! All this "woke" accomplishes is to emphasize how forced, contrived, and condescending the whole enterprise is.
We never even learn if the cops ever found Valjean's ill-gotten booty. Speaking of, why didn't he retrieve said booty before he tried to sweet-talk the bank exec instead of telling her that he didn't have the money? At this point, I half-expected him to "get" the money by robbing the bank. But no such luck.
Near the end, The Sundance Kid pulls a Horse Whisperer (or a Jeremiah Johnson), and swipes one of Fantine's horses to attempt a getaway (how he knows how to saddle, bridle, and ride a horse is not for us lesser minds to ponder). I suppose we ought to just be grateful we were not subjected to Valjean and Fantine (aka Sissy Spacek) getting jiggy with it.
This Forrest Tucker needs to go back to F Troop!