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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 55.32%
Worth A Look: 19.15%
Average: 25.53%
Pretty Bad: 0%
Total Crap: 0%
4 reviews, 23 user ratings
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| Evenhand |
by Dr Nick
"Quite amusing indie take on the buddy-cop movie"
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PREVIEW OF THE EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Reviewed from advance video copy). If good comedies are meant to make you laugh outloud on a regular basis, then Evenhand is not an especially good comedy. Sure, it makes you smile, even giggle occasionally, but as a whole there is just too much of.....errr....nothing......yup, nothing really happens.Newly divorced officer Francis is a new cop in town. Together with his assigned partner, Officer Morning, they make up a bad cop/good cop duo. It's just that Morning isn't especially bad, he's just used to the town-folk and is tired of them wasting his time. Francis on the other hand, wants to follow police procedures at all times. Oooooh, you say. Room for some conflict? Well, not really. As the film slowly moves along, they gradually accept eachother's ways, never really arguing about these different approaches to police work. Together they fight petty crime, busting graffiti artists, harassing the local youths, deal with domestic abuse, unruly neighbours etc. They even do some male bonding, as Francis falls for the girl in the convenience store. It's all very light hearted and repetetive until the end when things go wrong and something actually happens. Hurray!.
I have very mixed feeling after watching Evenhand. I didn't especially like it, but I didn't especially dislike it either. It was good to see a cop comedy that tries to use more subtle, darker humour than the in-your-face-gross-out humour of films like Super Troopers and The Police Academy films. It's a shame it didn't really work for me. But, comedy is extremely subjective and you might all find it hilarious. I actually hope you do, cause it's a nice effort and the film deserves to be seen. There's alot worse stuff being made out there.
My main problem with the film was its pacing. For 80 minutes you expect something to happen, but it doesn't. Francis and Morning just go about their daily grind, again and again........and again. Which brings me to my last point, the ending....or should I say endings. I won't say what happens in the end, but the way it was structured was really weird. There was about five fade-outs where I got up and thought "that's it finished", but it just kept going. But, finally it does end and it's all very cute and sad at the same time.Even if it's repetitive, it's still amusing enough to remain interesting for an hour and a half. There are definitely worse ways to spend an afternoon.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7274&reviewer=345
originally posted: 07/16/03 00:21:20
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 Edinburgh Film Festival. For more in the 2003 Edinburgh Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 SXSW Film Festival. For more in the 2003 South By Southwest Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 Tribeca Film Festival. For more in the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
20-Jan-2004 (R)
DVD: 20-Jul-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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