The Gingerbread Man (1998)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good movie but grossly overrated

Did you people see the same film I saw?

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This film seems like a good thriller book. The film is not all that bad but many decisions seems unlikely in the film. The guy comes out as quite the sucker for a lawyer. Some bits appear rather fake and rushed toward the end.

Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man isn't the director's best, but it's worth a looky-loo just to see this solid cast cavort around in a sweltering Georgia atmosphere and play out a narrative that's part sultry seduction thriller and part hard boiled whodunit. I remember watching it and going 'meh, I've seen this type of thing a thousand times and this one didn't raise the bar at all.' I'm thinking now that perhaps my mindset was in the wrong space, and that Altman set out to simply bring us the romantic murder mystery in its purest form, without deviation or higher ambitions. In that case he's made a neat little potboiler with a suitably ludicrous ending, some truly effective red herrings and a really great troupe of actors, so,e going nicely against type. The multi-talented Kenneth Branagh plays suave Georgia lawyer Rick MacGruder, who finds himself in deep trouble when he has an affair with sexy, slinky and shady Mallory Doss (the very underrated Embeth Davidz). She's a good enough girl, but she has a backwoods nutcase of a father named Dixon (Robert Duvall being uber strange and loving every second of it) who is stalking and threatening her. Dixon is a bedraggled, cult-leading swamp rat and Duvall plays him to the frenzied hilt of uncomfortable ticks and unkempt theatrics. MacGruder, being smitten with Mallory, is of course compelled to use his legal and personal power to help her, and concocts a convoluted scheme involving a subpoena to Mallory's belligerent ex husband Pete Randle (a cranky Tom Berenger blusters about in the third act). This of course sets off all kinds of back door motivations and sweaty double crosses that are hard to keep track of until all is revealed in the final act, prompting a collective audience reaction of "huh??". It's all in good fun though and at times it seems like Altman is deliberately dipping into B movie territory just to shirk his high art mantle and spice up this gumbo with some trashy, lowbrow flavour. I say bring it, that's exactly the way to my heart. Writing this review I'm now realizing I probably like this film way more than my ending statement might suggest, but sometimes we need to hash it all out on paper (or in this case a cramped iPad keyboard) to reevaluate our perception of a certain piece. The cast gets juicier, with Robert Downey Jr. doing a quick bit as Macgruder's slick buddy who works as a private investigator for the law office, Daryl Hannah and Famke Janssen as Rick's jilted wife as well. It's based on a John Grisham novel, and Altman seems to be the first director to adapt his work with a ramped up style and personal flair that goes beyond the academic thrills on the page. This one feels heightened, sultry and oh so sweaty in the way that only a southern set thriller can be. Cool stuff.

Robert Altman was one of the most famous, respected and prolific American directors; I have yet to see a lot of his output, but "Short Cuts" is one of my all-time favorite movies. Sometimes, however, he took on film projects as a hired hand, and "The Gingerbread Man" is clearly one of those cases. Obvious (at least as far as its most important twist is concerned), unconvincing (Kenneth Branagh is ludicrously - and doubly - miscast: as a Southerner, and as a ladies' man, Embeth Davidtz's femme fatale lacks magnetism and Robert Duvall's character is more like a cartoon with that hair), overlong (nearly 2 hours) and mostly dull, this is probably not a high point in Altman's career. At least he cranks up the luridness to an entertaining degree in the last 10 minutes or so. ** out of 4.

The film version of John Grisham's The Gingerbread Man is an entertaining thriller that is tight, visceral and never stops to take a breath. This has to be one of the tightest scripts ever written; so tight that the ending is too abrupt. That would be a problem if not for the way director Robert Altman paces the film so nicely that we don't have time to react to what is being shown on screen before something else sinister and important occurs.All across the board, the acting is quite terrific with Brit Kenneth Branagh giving a strong performance as Georgia attorney Rick Macgruder, who falls for mysterious woman Mallory Doss (Embeth Davidtz), and ends up mired in her dark and convoluted family involving her ex-husband (Tom Berenger) and crazed father (Robert Duvall). All this combined with Rick's divorce and attempt to father his two children leads to conventional endings but I still was utterly involved and entertained by all that happened in this movie.At it's highest level, The Gingerbread Man can work only as a stylish law drama and it does exactly that very well. Branagh and Davidtz are very good together and Robert Downey Jr. is brilliant as a womanizing, alcoholic private eye who has little to do but does it very well. This is the most un-Altman of all of his films yet he makes it work with his constant moving camera and zooms and by sticking to the script and keeping the character's quirks and idiosyncrasies to a minimum, I have to admit I really enjoyed this movie even though I know deep down that it is only a mildly entertaining film with nothing else to it. Still, sometimes it's a good reminder to know why movies are so popular after all these years.