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movie review - Fool's Gold

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Campbell River, 2023.07.14

I got in late and decided to burn off what remained of the evening with this movie on Netflix. It's about two treasure hunters in search of a four-hundred-year-old bounty that was lost when the Spanish were transporting a Queen's Dowry from the Caribbean (but notably including a considerable amount of refined products like china plates). Through a series of ridiculous discoveries (including finding cannon lying about in so little water that I, and Albertan, could have found it) they succeed despite the presence of gangsters, competitors, and their own dysfunction. I got a sense of where it was going about the halfway mark but toughed it out for no real reason. It did not fail to disappoint, with a nonsense ending that I won't even describe.

It's always a pleasure to see Ewen Bremner from "Trainspotting", and he and Donald Sutherland sure carried what they could in this piece, but wow, what a mess.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row