Despite the engaging tug of the fragmented storytelling that with some artfulness keeps your interest, making a puzzlemaster of you the viewer, the film was a surprisingly bald preposterous melodrama. Certain scenes, such as the one you find yourself expectant to see, when Sean Penn reveals he has the heart of Naomi Watt’s dead husband, just ring the gong of drama gone wrong. And Naomi Watts’ frantic downturn to drugs and vengeance comes out of nowhere just when the plot requires. It could be said of her performance that it’s a torture de force. She is repeatedly thrown such unplayable scenes while the camera gawks in venal expectation. It’s a shame that the changes she is made to chart have so little basis in the real. Benecio del Torro’s story is so powerful and touching too–it just loses out in an uneven competition with misguided schmaltz. Much like Mystic River, the power of the performances draws you in, only to leave you ultimately alienated by the contrivance of the plot. Belongs with Mystic River and a lamentable lot of others—films that make a dramatic ruckus around a phony commercial core. They talk big, but dish corn in the end.