Frankly, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. Granted, it’s a decent movie, with pretty good performances by some excellent actors, but I’ve seen better from each of them. Marcia Gay Harden was the only performance that I found stunning, and I think that’s only because she played such a sociopath in Case De Los Babys. If you want to be impressed by any of the three main actors, you could pick up their seminal prison performances: Penn in Dead Man Walking, Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption and Kevin Bacon in Murder In The First (though I prefer his turn in JFK; it’s a smaller role, but a well executed one and the movie is infinitely better).