This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Sean Penn is stranded in a strange city where everybody seems to realize his problems and his struggle, and insist on being particularly mean to him, just for the sake of being mean.<br /><br />It is a lot like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Vacation or Griffin Dunne in After Hours, in the sense that we watch an incredibly hapless main character go through an incredibly terrible day and we're supposed to call that entertainment. Except that instead of a comedy this one is a mean and boring excuse for a thriller where everybody is weird and bad-ass, so the whole thing reeks of Tarantino or any of those awful El Mariachi sequels.<br /><br />There are indeed several twists in the plot, but all of them are predictable and absolutely unable to make the film a little interesting. The end doesn't even try to make up for the rest of the experience. It's just as dull and silly.<br /><br />The only good thing I can say about this film is that the cast is very good. There are lots of good acting, but the story and the overall atmosphere is so brain dead that I couldn't really enjoy the acting.<br /><br />I always found that Oliver Stone's movies were excessively long-winded and pretentious. Now I read here at IMDb that he "wanted to make a small film that he would enjoy seeing as a teenager". So he is definitely a major idiot, and I will never see any of his movies again.<br /><br />I give it 3 stars, for the acting. Maybe the actors deserved more for the acting, but they also deserve a penalty for signing up such a bad script.