This movie was your typical connect-the-dots street crime drama. You have your cookie-cutter bad-guys as good-guys setup, Ethan Hawke playing against type, the dumb mom with a heart of gold who can't resist her sadistic, flunky husband, etc., etc, etc. All of this would have been fine if not for three major problems: 1) the acting sucked. (2) the editing sucked. (3) The pacing was awful.
I'm not going to get too into the bad acting. Bad acting is bad acting. A bunch of guys shouting "hey, where you going?" to each other for the better part of 2 hours gets old fast, and requires little subtlety or range. I won't linger on the film's pacing, either. You can see for yourself that there are several slightly interesting street scenes among the main characters, and then these slow, tedious, pointless domestic scenes that try to illustrate just how low these low-lives really are.
The true sin this film commits is in its editing. First question - why is it ALWAYS winter? This entire film supposedly spans about 20 years. Yet every scene is set in gray, cold, bleak weather. Adding insult to injury is the director and editor's inability to be consistent about what kind of permanent winter they're trying to capture here. Repeatedly throughout the entire movie there are juxtapositions of scenes where one scenario plays out with six inches of fresh snow on the ground - then cuts away instantly to what logically plays out as something that is happening only a few hours or even just minutes later - with NO SNOW on the ground! This happens constantly, back and forth, back and forth, snow/no snow, snow/no snow. It's like, what the hell's the deal with this? Is it winter or not? Or is it late October? and how can it go from looking like the middle of January one minute, to the beginning of November the next, with reddish leaves on the trees and softer sunlight? Truly an editing disaster, and unless it was supposed to be symbolic of something, utterly pointless. As is most of this movie, aptly titled "What Doesn't Kill You." The rest of the phrase is, "Makes You Wish It Had." At least, that's the case here.
I'm not going to get too into the bad acting. Bad acting is bad acting. A bunch of guys shouting "hey, where you going?" to each other for the better part of 2 hours gets old fast, and requires little subtlety or range. I won't linger on the film's pacing, either. You can see for yourself that there are several slightly interesting street scenes among the main characters, and then these slow, tedious, pointless domestic scenes that try to illustrate just how low these low-lives really are.
The true sin this film commits is in its editing. First question - why is it ALWAYS winter? This entire film supposedly spans about 20 years. Yet every scene is set in gray, cold, bleak weather. Adding insult to injury is the director and editor's inability to be consistent about what kind of permanent winter they're trying to capture here. Repeatedly throughout the entire movie there are juxtapositions of scenes where one scenario plays out with six inches of fresh snow on the ground - then cuts away instantly to what logically plays out as something that is happening only a few hours or even just minutes later - with NO SNOW on the ground! This happens constantly, back and forth, back and forth, snow/no snow, snow/no snow. It's like, what the hell's the deal with this? Is it winter or not? Or is it late October? and how can it go from looking like the middle of January one minute, to the beginning of November the next, with reddish leaves on the trees and softer sunlight? Truly an editing disaster, and unless it was supposed to be symbolic of something, utterly pointless. As is most of this movie, aptly titled "What Doesn't Kill You." The rest of the phrase is, "Makes You Wish It Had." At least, that's the case here.