Dear Mr Cusack,

I don’t think I am entitled to call you “John” after all we are not that familiar with one another.

I must tell you that I am really disappointed in you.

What the hell have you been thinking?

After so many fine movies, one of which a favourite of mine, The Thin Red Line,  and many good ones from other genres (High Fidelity, Con Air, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Being John Malkovich, Identity and whatever not)  I come across this horrible, weepy and truly no-go movie Grace is Gone?

What happened? Did they force you to act in it or did you have some sort of temporary dissociation problem?

You did look super rough to say the least (geeky is actually the  word). If there was some sort of problem in your personal life, that would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

I truly appreciate the effort of some film directors to make movies about so-called collateral damage and that’s what this movie is all about. Your wife in the movie, this Grace woman, she gets killed in action in Iraq. Not an uninteresting topic to base a movie on BUT… Grace is Gone is so awfully boring, unimaginative and just plain dull, it should really not figure in your list of movies.

It would have taken a better person than I am to keep quiet about this one-off.

However I do feel obliged to let you know that I still believe in your capability to choose good movies.

That the theme of collateral damage can be done in a very convincing way has been shown by the crew of  The Messenger.

All this said, I wish you all the best for your future filmmaking.

Yours sincerely,

allaboutwarmovies