Try watching this one without the first and last scenes. It's like they didn't give Kostner that part of the script until he finished the rest of the movie. The result is fine if you have no memory, but if you should dare to think about what you've seen, you find one huge and unacceptable flaw: The character you see acted is not the one the movie wants you to take with you when you go.
It isn't so much that the big surprise isn't fun, it's that there's too much good acting before this huge surprise happens to let you accept the humongous surprise as anything but an effort to con the audience into thinking they've seen a smart movie. Alas, it isn't a smart movie, it's a pretty good movie with a stupid device.
I'm reminded of the efforts to save a movie by inserting a narrator. Here it seems to me they've tried to goose up a pretty good movie by using a big surprise. It's a cheat.
It isn't so much that the big surprise isn't fun, it's that there's too much good acting before this huge surprise happens to let you accept the humongous surprise as anything but an effort to con the audience into thinking they've seen a smart movie. Alas, it isn't a smart movie, it's a pretty good movie with a stupid device.
I'm reminded of the efforts to save a movie by inserting a narrator. Here it seems to me they've tried to goose up a pretty good movie by using a big surprise. It's a cheat.