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.

"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.

How a director of Altman's experience could ever expect us to want to spend time with, or to care about what happens to, a lead character who is neurotic, a whiner, a jerk with no redeeming qualities -- that is the central puzzle about this profoundly confused piece of work. A monstrous piece of trash. In addition to this crippling flaw, the plot line requires serious concentration to follow. The setup that the Branagh character walks into is so obviously a setup from the start that we are inclined to wonder whether the writer and director have totally lost respect for their audience. This latter issue is at the core of the film: it represents directorial self-indulgence with profound contempt for the taste, values, and intelligence of the viewer. Very unusual for Mr. Altman.Patrick Watson

Kenneth Branagh plays a rascal, a hypocritical scoundrel,a villain,a bad lot &low fellow.Embeth Davidtz's character is a bit of fluff.Often moderately and conventionally atmospheric, the film has also a moralist intention and aim,a moralist, moralizing, ironic, quizzer, chaffer, biting, sarcastic side, with accents of satire--all of these, alternatively, also with fluid transitions.Yet the characters are mere puppets, which is bad in a moralist work--i.e.,a work that sets itself up for a moral study, for a study of manners.This ample defect undermines the entire film, it is a major flaw.The movie is, therefore, never complete or entire--and still for another reason or lack as well--it lacks the dramatic dimension, the labyrinthine itinerary, and it sadly reminds things like Mike Figgis' Cold Creek Manor (2003) or as cheap as Phil Joanou's Final Analysis (1992).A straight thriller like Peter Hyams' Narrow Margin (1990)(--with Gene Hackman,the delicious humid Anne Archer,M. Emmet Walsh,etc.) was ten times better and much more chilling.The story is trite, and the handling is hackneyed and tarnished. Which results in the movie being cheap, phony, schmaltz, a trite surrogate.(Hammer time:once B. Barbera spoke about the fake things, the fake legends in music--like U2 and Doors; the same might be said, for the cinema ,about directors like Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah.Or, to complete here, and quote myself a bit from an earlier review—also phony prestige directors like Lynch, Burton, the Coens, Soderbergh, maybe Shyamalan, Scorsese, the very phony idols of a fastidious emptiness.But maybe I will recant these stances someday.)Now to positive elements (that The Gingerbread Man (1998) completely lacks):a mystery thriller ought to be a maze, labyrinthine, sinuous, circuitous, like The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Touch of Evil (1958) ; like Don Siegel's adaptation of Israel Zangwill's novel "The Big Bow Mystery"--fortunately never adapted again since '46!;and like "Vertigo";like Jean Delannoy's Maigret movies,like Dario Argento's '70s movies,like David Wickes' Jack the Ripper (1988),or like François Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid .