Originally Posted by
Mal
Thanks for that, JE. I've heard a lot of other very solid reviews of this, as well. Definitely looking forward to seeing it.
It seems Affleck has found a sweet spot, making movies for a pretty broad audience but not everyone, that are tight and focused and not aiming to make (or spend) a bajillion dollars while at the same time not pushing the artistic envelope so far as to take some of the entertainment out of the equation. In other words, somewhere between middlebrow and highbrow. It's clearly working well, and now he's shown he can apply that formula outside of the Boston crime milieu. I'm happy for him - his acting career was sort of derailed mostly by a string of poor role/film choices, but if you remember back to Good Will Hunting, man, he was great in that role. I'm sure it had to eat at him to see Matt Damon become one of the most bankable guys in Hollywood, while at the same time his own younger brother blossomed and surpassed his success as an actor (deservedly so, in my opinion - I think Casey's performance in The Coward Robert Ford was outstanding), even if it was under Ben's tutelage.
I heard an interesting interview with Affleck last weekend, and he talked briefly about the process of filming the student takeover of the embassy with a bunch of retirees, because as he said, "The only problem with students is, you know, they're in school all day" so they couldn't get the hundreds of young extras they needed. So apparently if you look closely, you'll notice a bunch of old men storming the compound instead of 19 year-olds. Pretty funny.