Review of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) by Ross M — 18 Jul 2009

A good film but with some clear flaws. Has a great cast and a great director at the helm but it does still carry some disappointments.

Although the depiction of the true life events may not be hugely accurate it doesn't really dampen the the film too much, managing to still stay mostly entertaining.

Watching this 2 and a half hour film wasn't ever boring but there were some scenes that really did drag on or could have easily been cut altogether. In fact, it could have run at only 2 hours with out the excess footage. On top of that, these scenes are all thrown into a horrible structureless mess. Now surely Eastwood could of done something about that, even if the screenplay, despite its good dialogue, hindered the fluency of the film? As a result, the film appears very jumbled and has to be one of the messiest films I have seen as a result. The useless scenes really do not help to clear the clogging of the film either.

On a good note, the main cast are excellent. John Cusack is great, with Kevin Spacey (a stuck on moustach in tow) delivers another knockout performance. Law, in all of the 3 minutes he actually appears in the film, being as he plays the victim, steals the show, much like he did in Road To Perdition.

Despite the bad things of the film, the court room scenes are gripping and are easily the best part of the film and are the main reasons you should see this.