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The
Yards, 15, 116mins
Director:
James Gray
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix and Charlize
Theron
Where: Nationwide
When: November 10
Rating: 
No time to read? Click
here for opinion in a nutshell.
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Any film that teams bright
young things Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix and
Charlize Theron with seasoned pros like Faye Dunaway
and James Caan ought to be an acting tour de force
– especially under the direction of James Gray,
who made the stirring drama Little Odessa.
But watching The Yards
is like sitting in on an acting class where all
the participants are under hypnosis. The film is
all hushed whispers and muted tones, as if everyone
involved was sleepwalking at the time.
Wahlberg
plays an ex-con who gets a job in the New York subway
yards run (where old trains go to die or get repaired)
through his connected and corrupt uncle (Caan).
He also hooks up with old mate Phoenix and, despite
vowing to go legit, gets drawn into a world of greed
and murder. Theron, meanwhile, hovers around as
the girl who's dating Phoenix but quite fancies
Wahlberg, too.
It's a corny, cliché-laden plot, and the unusual setting fails to enliven
it. Gray has made a dreary drudge of a movie that
carries no emotional weight and crawls to its violent
conclusion with all the enthusiasm of a knackered
snail.
We're giving it a couple
of stars on the strength of its thespian roll call
(who can argue that Wahlberg
is one of the few pop stars to successfully make
the transition to film star?), but frankly it's
a waste of their time and the audience's.
— Simon Button 07.11.00
Where's it showing near you? Check Scoot.
Click here to check out the official The Yards site.
Need more movies? Get them all at the Internet Movie Database.
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