ramsri007 For starters, I cannot fathom why Downey accepted this role of Clyde Pell, a private detective. Granted, those were troubled times for him on a personal front but roles like this do no justice to his immense active gift. This movie, although being claimed as a thriller, does not give you a feel of one. The story is about how a lawyer, who has everything going for him, is played by an unassuming woman into taking his case. From there on his life turns upside down. The story is about how he gets out of this mess and pieces it back again. A lot more could have been done to make it interesting and gripping but the movie shows the lack of direction & interest.

MikeMagi How bad can a movie directed by Robert Altman from a John Grisham story starring Kenneth Branagh, Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall be? Surprisingly bad. Grisham's tale of a cocky southern lawyer, the disturbed waitress he beds and her nutcase father requires a filmmaker with a sharp sense of storytelling, the ability to make a twisted murder mystery make sense. That ain't Altman. He's at his best ambling through a yarn, whimsically viewing it through a skewed lens. The performances are all first-rate. But by the climax, as the characters race through a raging hurricane, you can't tell who's doing what to whom and whether it's worth killing for. Worse yet, you don't really care.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Robert Altman (MASH, Nashville, Gosford Park, A Prairie Home Companion), the title I knew wouldn't be anything to do with the fairytale, so I was intrigued to try it. Basically Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh) is the divorced lawyer in Savannah, Georgia who stumbling out drunk from a party has a chance meeting with waitress and caterer Mallory Doss (Embeth Davidtz) who has apparently lost her car. So he drives her home, where seemingly her father has parked the car, and after a small argument she innocently undresses in front of him, and they end up kissing and spending the night together. He rushes to work after the one night stand, but he can't stop thinking about her, and he is surprised and glad to see her again at his office, she is asking to file a suit over her abusive father Dixon, nicknamed "The Gingerbread Man" (Robert Duvall), after he has been threatening her. Rick manages to indeed take Dixon to court and have him put on trial to prove these accusations, with the help of witnesses such as Mallory's ex-husband Pete Randle (Tom Berenger), and he is sentenced to a mental institution. But Dixon has a small group of friends who go to the institution and break him out, as well as a few other inmates, and of course he is after Rick and Mallory. Together, with his children Libby (Independence Day's Mae Whitman) and Jeff Magruder (Jesse James), their lives are in danger and they must find places to hide and people to help catch the nut-case again, and put him back where he belongs, or maybe even kill him. Also starring Robert Downey Jr. as Clyde Pell, Daryl Hannah as Lois Harlan, Famke Janssen as Leeanne Magruder, Clyde Hayes as Carl Alden, Troy Bailey as Konnie Dugan, Julia Ryder Perce as Cassandra and Danny Darst as Sheriff Hope. Branagh gives a not too bad performance putting on his Southern American accent he brought to Wild Wild West, and Duvall is fitting a psychotic father to the innocent Davidtz, I will admit the story went slightly downhill after halfway through, but all in all it isn't a boring thriller. Good!

tieman64 "The Gingerbread Man is the first thriller I've ever done!" – Robert Altman In 1955, Charles Laughton directed "The Night of the Hunter", a spooky slice of Southern Gothic in which Robert Mitchum plays a spooky serial killer. One of that film's more famous sequences consisted of two kids escaping from Mitchum on a rowboat, the kids frantically paddling whilst Mitchum wades after them like a monster. Seven years later Mitchum played an equally creep killer in "Cape Fear", another film set in the American South. That film featured a local attorney trying to protect his family and likewise ended with Mitchum terrorising folks on a boat. Now we have Robert Altman's "The Gingerbread Man", another slice of small town Southern Gothic. Altman says he consulted "The Night of the Hunter" for inspiration and tackled such a mainstream film purely because he wanted to "spread his wings and try a popcorn picture", but what he also seems to be attempting is a deconstruction of the canonical films of the genre.So instead of a showdown on small boat, we get a showdown on a giant ship. Instead of two kids being kidnapped, we get two kids being safely returned to the police. Instead of money being hidden, we have money being readily given via a last will and testament. Instead of the righteous attorney of the 1961 film (and the deplorable attorney of the 1991 remake), we get a rather three-dimensional lawyer played by Kenneth Branagh. Instead of the monster chasing the family we get the hero chasing the bad guys. Instead of the monster breaking into the family's house boat, we have the hero hunting the monster on board the monster's "house ship". Similarly, instead of a murderous serial killer we get an innocent weirdo played by Robert Duvall. . .etc etc etc.Altman goes on and on, reversing everything just a little, pulling at the edges and doing his own thing. His touch is most apparent during the film's first half-hour, the film existing in an uneasy space between conventional plot-driven storytelling and Altman's fondness for overlapping dialogue, narrative lethargy, prowling camera movement and the way that characters aren't so much introduced as they are simply part of what's going on.Still, despite Altman's best intentions, "The Gingerbread Man" never rises above mediocrity. Altman's too bound to the conventions of the "thriller format" to do much damage, his style is too slack to generate tension and the film is simply not radical enough to counterpoint other canonical films in the genre. "Gingerbread Man" is thus too mainstream to work as a more pure Altman film and too Altman to work as a mainstream thriller.The film's not a complete waste, though. Robert Downey Junior, Kenneth Branagh and the usually intolerable Daryl Hannah all turn in juicy performances. The film also has a nice atmosphere, set against a approaching hurricane, and the final act contains some interesting twists and turns. While it's not the complete hokey disaster that Scorsese's "Cape Fear" was, the film still never amounts to anything memorable.Incidentally, in the late 1990s Altman made 3 successive films set in the American South: "Kansas City", "Gingerbread Man" and "Cookie's Fortune". With its hierarchies of class, politics and crime, and its desire to break radically away from your typical gangster narrative, "Kansas City" is the more important of these three films. That said, "Cookie's Fortune", whilst a much slighter tale, is perhaps the better picture. 7/10 - Altman claims that this is his first thriller, but he directed "Images", an art house thriller, in 1972. Worth one viewing.