THE COLD EQUATIONS (1996) * This is consistently one of the most boring films I've ever seen. That does not change. But within the ubiquitous aesthetic grime, there are embers. The writers and ringmasters are trying to play a game-life and mortality, the good of the few vs. the good of the many/utility, individualism and conformity and the cost of either, corporate ethos where anything can be done for profit because it can be blamed on someone else-that is so far beyond their reach that it's barely recognizable what they're trying to play. But there are scattered moments throughout where Poppy Montgomery is a real, almost sympathetic character: for aren't we all flawed, after all, and desperate, and aren't we all somehow angry, or should be? Bill Campbell is useless until the final scene, when he actually kind of does the same thing. I don't know what actors could have pulled off what they were all trying to do: Lili Taylor and Richard Burton in his prime, maybe, and even then because they would have refused to utter the dumbest lines, and they are legion. But it isn't pointless. Just boring, and terrible.
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