But, for much of its running time, it's a movie to admire while wishing that the wild man would come out from behind the curtain and sing his blues.
And the problem with "Conviction" is that for most of its running time, it feels more like another one of those movies than like the true story it is.
But the nice thing about this movie is that it spends most of its running time wandering away from its native clichés, rather than wallowing in them.
Like The Expendables and its sequels, it spends most of its running time trivialising violence, and its remaining minutes being sentimental about the heroes' brotherly bonds.
The peculiar thing about The Descendants (2011, Fox, 15), in which Alexander Payne either "went soft" or "grew up" depending on your point of view, is just how unassuming it appears for much of its running time.
Focus, which stars Will Smith as a master con man and Margot Robbie as his new apprentice, spends much of its running time convincing you it is the best entry into the genre in years.
But the film somewhat hampers its intentions by coming out of the gate so strong that what it offers for much of its running time is merely the wrong kind of horror.
Hejira's centrepiece is an eight-and-a-half minute meander in which nothing much happens, little changes, no concessions are made to musical accessibility and nothing is resolved – and yet it's hypnotically compelling for every second of its running time.
It's also an odd headlining choice for an actor, particularly one as physically gifted as Depp, since it consigns him to spectral status for most of its running time.
For much of its running time, Mr. Mendes's "As You Like It" might almost be retitled "Some Like It Cold," so insistent are the shadows flitting at everyone's heels, threatening to forestall the possibility of things' ever turning out happily.
It is the kind of movie that for much of its running time seems to be meandering, bafflingly but not unpleasantly, from scene to scene, peeking into the lives of a dozen or so characters.
