everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I managed to miss this movie over the years but now have been able to see it on Netflix streaming movies. I generally like De Niro, and generally like Penn, so had high hopes for this comedy of sorts. I came away a bit disappointed. The beginning and end were most interesting but most of the middle seemed to bog down quite a bit, trying hard for laughs but rarely delivering.It was filmed in the communities in Western Canada near Vancouver, including a community just north of Porteau Cove, where my kids and I spend a couple of days in 1990. Really beautiful scenery.Robert De Niro is Ned and Sean Penn is Jim, they manage an escape from prison and head for the Canadian border. But their journey is interrupted when they are mistaken in this small border town for two visiting priests who had written a popular Catholic book. As they plot their crossing the cops show up with search dogs.A 20-something Demi Moore is also a key character with a young deaf and mute daughter that gets involved. In a miracle of sorts she gains her ability to make sounds and, pointing to the two men, barely says "con ... victs" but the others interpret it as "con ... verts" which provides some humor.SPOILERS: In the end the cops are gone and the escaped convicts are safe, and as Ned begins to cross the bridge to freedom he looks back at Jim who has been motivated by the order of priests and decides to stay with them and start a fresh life.

I was truly disappointed with this picture. De Niro and Penn were cast right . It was the way they played their characters that was "out of character" for them! They both underplayed their roles as dim-witted convicts and to me , that hurt the picture immensely. I'm so use to seeing them completely annihilate a role with their raw intensity that seeing them barely acting or acting not in their "norm", just ruined it for me.Still it was great to see these two legends act together. Demi Moore as Molly was a little better. As a tough single-mom trying to make a living for her and her deaf-mute child. She over acted but it was okay. She was a little more believable than De Niro in their scenes. Had De Niro acted like he should have, he would have blown away Moore in their scenes. Another thing that for me didn't ring through was Moore's and De Niro's so-called chemistry. There wasn't any! No sparks, no nothing! A big yawn! So the ending does not ring through at all for me.Hoyt Axton as Father Levesque was great casting. He looked the part and his scenes rang true with me. The late Bruno Kirby as a guilt-ridden deputy was a little amusing. Again I found it hard to believe he and Demi were "getting it on" It was more amusing to me to see Kirby and De Niro in the same scene and envisioned them from way back in The Godfather:Part 2(1974) as Young Corleone and young Clemenza.The late Ray McNally, who by the way this film is dedicated to in memory, did a great small role as the warden. He was intense and no BS in his pursuit of the escaped cons. James Russo as 'Bobby' the main bad-guy convict was brilliant. He oozed evil personified. Reminded me of James Remar's Ganz from 48Hrs (1982) Yes he over acted but it was necessary since both De Niro & Penn were so underplaying it.And last but least, Wallace Shawn as the translator and John C. Reilly as the young monk entranced and impressed with Penn's 'Father Brown', were excellent. So all in all these bit character actors made the film better than the main stars! What a shame because had Sean and Robert act the way they naturally do, they would have blown away everyone and stolen the picture. Oh well...there is always the original with Bogart,Ray and Ustinov.

This has to be one of the most idiotic movies ever.I can deal with completely unbelievable. Some guy in the execution chamber suddenly produces guns out of nowhere and shoots everyone who isn't needed in the plot later? I'm not surprised the director chose to set this scene up in darkness. It is unexplainable.But that's OK!I can deal with plot streams being abandoned. The warden,determined to bring the fugitives to justice, just disappears from the movie because the guy he is looking for jumped in a river and became a local hero! I don't think so! I can also deal with bad acting;I can also deal with clichéd writing. But I don't want them all in one movie.This gets a high vote in my all time worst!

Once we are past the opening scenes set in what seems to be a coal mine doubling as a prison, this film can be enjoyed as a fable. Many films should be prefaced with the phrase 'once upon a time' and this one is no exception. Producer DeNiro could not get Stan and Ollie so he put himself in the latter role, and chose Penn for the part of Laurel. We keep expecting to see Penn break out into Laurelish tears at any moment, and it is only the sound of the water that prevents us from hearing DeNiro shouting "whooaaaaaaa" as he slides down the falls. And there are so many times I expected Ollie to swat Stanley, but it never happens.Left to their mugging, my rating might be higher, but somehow inserting Demi into the mix spoils something. If the time were 1930, the little girl who plays a key role would have had a much older looking mother, or at least one who looked more bedraggled by her life in that wilderness.Then the storyline takes a disastrous violent turn just after the statute seems to have produced another miracle. Such a scene worked in Some Like It Hot when the killer jumped out of the cake. Here it ruins the mood that is being set. Surely there was another way to get the girl into the water.I have no problem, however, watching it again.