Galveston

Galveston is a very dull and tiring drama about an outlaw who receives a fatal diagnosis and decides to spend his few remaining weeks protecting a prostitute, both being in the local mafia boss’s sight (a true waste of Beau Bridges’ potential). The synopsis sounds interesting, but all that follows is just slow and never-ending rambling about life in damnation without any deeper digging into the topic nor – God forbid! – any answers. Ben Foster gives a solid performance, though I found Elle Fanning was not fit for her role – the two lack any chemistry between them. And the ending was maybe targeting the viewer’s emotions, but it left me totally cold. [Sitges 2018] (08/10/2018)

A criminal and a prostitute who had both hit the rock bottom grow closer to each other while they were on the run from gangsters and the law and it turns out almost exactly as you would expect. An overused theme, just played out by a different duo of actors than you saw the last time, or the time before that. And the overly sentimental ending doesn’t really help matters. [Sitges FF] (08/10/2018)

It's almost hard to believe that such an average and clichéd story came from the pen of Nica Pizzolatta - the man behind the TV series hit True Detective, which stands out in many ways from everything we have seen in the crime genre in recent years. However, Galveston doesn't stand out at all, it's quite blandly directed and lacks any real punch. The film gets stuck in a dead end after about 20 minutes, where almost the rest of the runtime wallows. Something slightly inventive only kicks in towards the very end, but even that is not interesting enough to improve the overall impression of the previous (non)events. If the book deals with deep existential questions, the film doesn't care too much about them and rather tries to bore the viewer, or annoy them with the unconvincing performance of Elle Fanning. It's a shame for Ben Foster in this film. (08/10/2018)