Jim Davies (Christian Bale) is back on the streets of LA after six years in the army. He finished up as a Ranger before being honourably discharged. Suffering with extreme PTSD, he hits town with his buddy Mike (Freddy Rodriguez). Jim is trying to start a career in law enforcement, but his psychological injuries are proving an obstacle. He feels that he has no hope if he does not get a career in law enforcement, and he is worried about how he is going to get his wife-to-be over the border and living legally out of Mexico. Mike, meanwhile, is unemployed and his wife (Eva Longoria) is on the warpath. The film follows the pair as they drive around the city, drinking, smoking weed and engaging in medium-level criminality, ostensibly handing out resumes for Mike to get a job. All while Jim's psychological state worsens.
Christian Bale's frightening performance as Jim Davies is the towering point for this film, the directorial debut of the man who wrote the screenplay for the superb "Training Day". While Bale's performance is manic, it tends to veer close to being over-the-top at times, while Freddy Rodriguez's does more so. It is not helped by some dodgy script writing, which is surprising seeing as how it's coming from the man behind "Training Day". The dialogue could have been better. It sways too much into hip-hop parlance with "dawg" thrown out a bit much and some of it is cringe-worthy. I'm not saying people don't talk like the way the men do in this film, but it just came across as a bit pantomime, and together with the scenes where the two leads lose the run of themselves a little it was detrimental to the overall impact. Overall this is a real heavy-hitter. The film pulls us in to all this anger and misery and bludgeons us with the baseball bat until it is covered in blood and snaps in two. In that sense it does a commendable job, but it did not seem to realise it's potential. All it's missing is a bit more plot focus and some fine tuning in the script and character writing.
