Krug said:
From what I heard, the original movie consists mostly of an extended conversation between the two principal characters in a hotel room, and doesn't have much in the way of action. (don't really know how accurate that is, though)
Anyway, I thought the first two-thirds of the movie were great, and that it went downhill during the final section. Some things stretch plausibility initially, but not to the point where they can't be explained by greed, desperation, or a personality quirk.
The action during the final scenes, however, almost falls apart because the director doesn't quite do enough to establish the sort of relationship between Crowe's and Bale's characters that would have made the ending feel plausible. Overall, I still liked the movie a great deal, but I left the theater thinking that a better ending would have made it great, instead of just good.
Hmm. Another thought - I'd say that the movie either needed more or less emphasis on the whole "Code of the West", since what we got wasn't really a happy middle ground. It served to explain some of the characters' actions, but it wasn't quite enough. They either ought to have gone with an all-out, gritty, Unforgiven style story, or embraced the traditional Western tropes more.
Still, I'd recommend it despite the flaws.
