Conspiracy (2008)

I watched this on a Saturday afternoon while doing laundry, and that's about what it's good for. don't expect "Citizen Kane." movies like this require some suspension of disbelief. plot holes you could drive the proverbial truck through, characters behaving in ways no real human being would ever behave...you have to be able to say "Oh well, at least I'll see some stuff get blown up." and you will, so it's all good.most of the fight scenes seem to have been filmed in a forest fire, with shadows and smoke obscuring much of the action--or, more precisely, non-action, since as other reviewers have noted, Val Kilmer's character is able to beat bad guys to a pulp without ever striking a blow.you will also have to ignore some knee-jerk lefty politics. yeah yeah, illegal immigrants good, Halliburton bad...we get it. but the plot is so tenuous it really doesn't matter.in summary: if it's on free cable, watch it; you'll be moderately entertained for an hour or so.

Val Kilmer sleep walks through this film as if he's just lost his best friend. He is so portly that this movie would resemble a spaghetti western where the hero ate all of the spaghetti. There is even a nude scene where Kilmer, encased in hairless blubber, is laid out on a tile floor naked. Never before have I seen such phony fight scenes. Bad guys rush Kilmer but are mysteriously thrown to the ground by a telekinetic force. This happens over and over again. The overweight hero walks into town and speaks to the semi attractive woman at the "lending" library. Why not just "library"? Don't all libraries imply the word "lending" without saying it? Anyway, this woman practically throws her back out and makes ridiculous facial contortions as she flirts shamelessly with our corpulent hero. He takes it all in stride, as if it happens all the time; his face never deviating from a depressing scowl. I would have thought he'd enter the sandwich shop or the nearest deli before looking for a book. And the entire movie looks as if it were shot with a video camera; it probably was. Pathetic.

"Conspiracy" has Val Kilmer playing an traumatized Marine who searches for his best friend, another Marine, who disappeared in a small town where no one seems to know about him and are not warm in terms of welcoming people who are not from there. The local residents of this city à-la Old West style built by a powerful businessman (Gary Cole) will do anything to bother Kilmer and his obstinate search.An more experienced viewer will have one title popping on his head while watching this: "Bad Day at Black Rock". Yes, "Conspiracy" amazingly resembles the 1955 film directed by John Sturges starring Spencer Tracy as the mysterious one armed man who defeats a whole town just to deliver an medal to an soldier friend of his. Both stories deal with small towners prejudices against foreigners; both stories have an main character who is handicapped in a way and somehow this isn't an adversity at all; and both plots take place in desert areas. What makes the older film better than the new one (this isn't a remake however) is the originality and the tension presented there, the mystery was more gripping. What is presented in this recent project is an action film with lots of shootings, bullets and knives flying, a simplistic story made to please an large audience who enjoys that kind of movie. Nonetheless, it's a decent and enjoyable action film, the required elements for this genre are all present here, Kilmer is quite good as the Marine who needs to put his demons behind him, after an traumatic event that he testified during the war in Iraq, rebuilding himself in order to find out what happened to his friend. Since most viewers really dislike old films, this is a nice substitute to Sturges film. But that one was an complete classic compared to this. 7/10

This movie sucked. I mean... wow. I surely didn't expect a masterpiece. But the actual level of suckitude left me speechless and almost breathless, as if my body was trying to rescue itself into sweet unconsciousness. It reminded me, and heavily at that, of Steven Seagal. But not the Seagal of "Under Siege" or "On Deadly Ground", who we all came to love. No, I mean the Steven Seagal who brought us straight-to-video suckfests like "Black Dawn".Val Kilmer, like Seagal, is just a blimp, floating through the foggy remains of a story, while it rains wooden puppets. Who of course are the other actors in my weird little analogy.Every little thing in this movie is bad and sucks in ways where there are no more words to articulate a warning. So let me just say this: DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE! Thank you for your attention.