Like Duel, I have meant to watch this movie so many times it’s ridiculous. I stand there with the disc in my hand – I go online and read reviews which never really contain any info that makes me desperate to watch it – finally this time I just found myself saying to myself, “What the f*ck are you doing? It’s Spielberg, you’re a film nerd, and you’ve not seen it yet!” LOL. Well, that worked – and putting it in a double bill with Duel didn’t hurt either, it’s certainly recommended.

And Spielberg it really is. On the technical side of things, this film is nothing short of flawless. Though Billy Goldenberg did a fine job with the score for Duel, it’s here finally that the John Williams relationship began, and boy, it’s there if anywhere, when those strings come in over the main title, that you hear an artist who started as brilliant as he has continued. The film is also lovingly, beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond.

But while I really wanted to love this movie, in the end I felt it dragged far too much. It’s very scattered in what it’s trying to say – the public adulation of the couple, Hawn in particular, resembling Bonnie and Clyde among many others, the fleeting digs at the media done better in Natural Born Killers (public adulation of the criminals there too of course), the baby storyline and other things resembling the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. In other words, it’s all very much been done better elsewhere before and since. You can’t deny the perfect blending of skill and fun though, and it is a large enough part of any understanding of Spielberg to again make me ashamed I didn’t see it sooner.

“We are the fucking gringos, aren’t we.”

To say I didn’t expect much from this would be a candidate for understatement of the year. Kevin Kline seemed about the only thing it had going for it and the reviews I’d read were mostly not good. But if this doesn’t eventually pick up as much kudos as a Babel, Crash, or my personal choice for comparison Man on Fire, there’s something wrong in the world of film. This has a perfect pace, the photography is beautiful and – I think it’s becoming my mantra this year – it goes all the way it needs. I loved the slight buddy movie humour between Kline and Cesar Ramos, there is a scene that makes wonderful use of Rufus Wainwright’s “Agnus Dei” (which I never really liked that much, especially as the start of “Want Two” which is otherwise fantastic), and it even has some open ends to ponder. I’m glad to find other people on the IMDb message boards wondering about the boy at the end and the girl who tries to sell Kline Adriana. Is she his daughter, now a part of the system that took her from him? Is that Veronica’s son?

This is an interesting one, I guess because of quite how much I expected to hate it from the start. To my surprise it actually hits a place just as morally gut-wrenching as Mystic River (the novel of which was written by the same author) in the end, which certainly leaves you thinking you’ve seen something great – but it took a lot of its time in winning me over.

Someone says to Affleck’s character early on, “You may look young, but if you wanna find this girl, you better not act it,” and that’s the problem I find with the whole movie. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes (at least, that’s what I’m sure it’s supposed to be), Affleck finds one of the missing children, dead, with the killer in the room. We’re given a grotesque close-up of the child’s face, a cutaway of Affleck throwing up, before he shoots the killer in the back of the head, all for us to see. I’m sure cheers have gone up in cinemas over this moment. All I wanna say is bravo, you showed the bloodthirsty animals exactly what they wanted to see.

Don’t get me wrong, a child killer deserves whatever is coming to them. But this seems like such an immature, simplistic approach to the subject all the way. A scene shortly following this has Ed Harris seething about, “if a child molester sees me comin’, he better run,” etc, and it’ll likely be an Oscar clip in February. It’s clear to me that that moment isn’t acting. Everyone in this movie has the exact same look on their face. It’s the look any of us get on our faces when dealing with this subject. But it’s combined with a horrible self-satisfied smugness like they actually think making a movie about it is half as good as anything the investigators and police do in real life. And all the way through is Casey Affleck, looking at every moment like he’s looking for an opportunity to crack a joke.

It’s a well-made movie (especially for Ben Affleck’s debut as director – but I really didn’t want to find myself saying that here, it really should exceed his name) and has its moments, but it’s also a very cheap shot at emotions that should not be exploited this way – a masterpiece, as some have been saying? Give me a freaking break. It’s all in the ending, and that I’ll grant you comes close; but it’s not enough. Part of me thought I might’ve found myself comparing this movie to the far too obviously comparable case of Madeleine McCann. It’d be an insult to do so, but I’m sure it’ll be enough to stall a UK release for quite some time.