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
All About War Movies 
I am only vaguely familiar with the movie. My impression was Cusack was looking for an anti-Iraq war policy movie so he could make a statement against the Bush Administration. I have read that Cusack is very liberal. He may have been so desperate to make a point that he did not read the script too carefully. I agree that his recent role decisions have been poor. I am a big fan of his and am also disappointed in his recent output.
I could have gone on scolding him. I did not care for 2012 either. This Grace thing has even won prizes. Although, believe me, the trailer is way better than the movie.
62% on Rotten Tomatoes. (6 of his last 10 movies have been panned, by the way). Please don’t hurt John C, he was the only thing good about Thin Red LIne. He gets a lot of slack because of Grosse Pointe Blank.
I really really like this post of yours. It’s a nice way to critic someone 🙂
I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t give any comment on the movie. I like Cussack too, but every good actors certainly have their bad movie days
Thanks, I tought I’d like to try something else for a change. Next time I wil write one to someone whose movie I really appreciated. You could do this as well. I have an idea whom you might choose.
The movie is really not gripping. He definitely had a bad movie day.
That’s a good idea…I will do it on his birthday 🙂
[…] This letter is influenced by Caroline’s letter to Mr. Cussack […]