Like so many other reviews, I agree that this film had a great cast but nothing worked. It's one of those movies where 4 or 5 characters are introduced, and they drop hints about some major, major secret event that took place 30 years earlier. They keep alluding to it and dropping hints and showing ultra-fast flashback sequences (like 3 or 4 seconds at time). The purpose, of course, is to tease us in the audience and make us die with curiousity and dying to know what the big secret in the past was. Instead, I was looking at my watch and wondering when (if ever) is Sharon Stone gonna appear in this film. If you tease the big secret too long, you better deliver one HELLUVA major secret...and it wasn't. Albert Finney and Catherine Keener and Stone are wonderful in this. But the plot?? Albert Finney catches some kids in a race-horse scheme. They offer him a bribe, but he does NOT take the money. He tells them just don't do it anymore. He could have taken their money, but he didn't. He could have turned them into the cops, but he didn't. Instead, he was nice enough to give them a break and realize they were just young kids trying to make a buck. So how do they pay him back?? They blackmail him! HUH???? You're supposed to blackmail a-holes who did you wrong, not guys who cut you some slack. And what's up with Jeff Bridges? He goes from a good looking billionaire to a street bum in a matter of 24 hours?? HUH???? Totally 100% unbelievable, simply because he did this transformation on his own free will !!! And Sharon Stone's character feels sorry for her soon-to-be-sold horse and does not want to see it destroyed, so guess what she does???
