RussTheRifle

I went into this film excited for how good it could be, and had heard good things about it from a couple friends. It surpassed ALL my expectations. First of all, the quality of any space isolation movie is going to depend heavily on the quality of the actor in isolation. Well, Gosling knocks it out of the park. His portrayal of the character works very well, and that's all that really needs to be said. Ortiz's voice as Rocky is also excellent. There are of course the necessary stunning cinematics that come with the space movie territory, if anything they could have used just a little more of that aspect. But the best and most unexpected part for me was just how easy it was to get so invested in these characters. I am an absolute softie, so it's no surprise that I cried at least once, but it was a very well earned moment that was set up pretty well and subtly, even if not entirely unexpected. On occasion, science-heavy movies like this can have a very convoluted plot and it can be difficult to understand what the characters are even trying to do, but no such problem in this movie. There are of course some small nitpicks and plot contrivances. For example, the computer will be able to translate some words from Rocky that made me wonder, "what context would that have possibly come up in?", as well as some more complex words (like "didn't", which as a contraction wouldn't be how Rocky is speaking) and fluent sentences, which is especially (minorly) confusing when at other times he will say things like, "Grace no wake up if sleep!" They switch between the 2 rather arbitrarily, but as I said this is a nitpick. Second, at the climax of the movie when Grace is retrieving the collector and it gets ****, would he not have been able to climb back in the ship and fly away first before rescuing it danger free? Again, these are small complaints against an otherwise phenomenal movie, that is also surprisingly clean. Hard recommend for any moviegoer.

Bonhoeffer is an incredible man and there is an incredible story to tell about him. However, this movie misses the mark in a couple ways. I think there's really one overarching problem that taints the film in a few different facets: the movie simply cannot decide what it wants to be. First, the story itself. Is the movie seeking to be a biography telling the story of a historical figure, or is it seeking to be a more meta commentary on how we need to stop and stand up to hate in the world today? It would have sufficed and indeed seems intended to have been taken as a pure biography, but the filmmakers for whatever reason felt the need to inject the film with a meta call to action as well. This can absolutely work in the flow of the story, but all of the moments in this movie in that vein feel incredibly forced, and they don't really land like they should. Second, the overall tone of the film. Does it want to be a wholesome story about standing up to hate or an dark thriller about the consequences of hate? The movie has a bunch of very heavy moments, but it does not feel like a heavy film. The lighting is not dark enough, the environment not grimy enough, the intensity not felt enough (largely) to present it as the heavy film that it seems to be trying to be. As a result, the heavy moments feel like anvils dropped out of nowhere and don't resonate like they should have. Third, is the movie trying to be a family friendly Christian movie or not? It's produced by Christian-adjacent Angel Studios, which means it largely stays true to its faith-based roots and keeps the movie mostly clean. But at the same time, there's enough moments that I would at least hesitate to bring my pre-teen children to see this if I were in a Christian parent's shoes. And because it is telling the stories of **** but does not want to show the full darkness of such people, it fails to sell the **** as all that villainous, which is kind of a critical point for the movie to nail. So overall, the movie needed to be far more committal in a lot of ways. Several other issues still remain that lower the viewing experience. First of all, the telling of this story via flashback was completely unnecessary and served no purpose other than to pad the runtime slightly, I guess. The "main" story consists of pretty much nothing, as we spend about 15 mins there to watch Bonhoeffer get transported to a prison, try to escape, and then get transported to another prison before being executed. The flashbacks don't make the moments mean more, it just pans back to present-day Bonhoeffer for about 10 seconds in between scenes, as if they couldn't think of a transition to what they wanted to show next and used that as a clunky device instead. In the end, it only served to make the plot more confusing, especially since there was no effort put into aging him or differentiating physically between the different stages of his adult life, which could make it difficult to track with the jumping for some. Second, the writing and acting in the movie is all very flat and vanilla. The lines and the deliveries are all super basic and give off the vibe of a decent college stage play. It all feels very clunky and the passioned moments feel ungenuine. As kind of a sub point, some of the cinematography is weird at points as well, with some awkward shots and switches that don't help with the immersion. Third, and to me this is the second biggest problem with the movie, is that it assumes you know as much about Bonhoeffer as the director does. Bonhoeffer was an incredible individual, and the director touts him in the opening as "one of the greatest heroes in history". But you only ever know this from the characters telling you so in the movie. He gives exactly one sermon in front **** of people (of about 200ish), yet he apparently has this massive voice and influence that must be protected at all costs. He never writes a thing, and yet his apparently hundreds of books have impacted millions. The action of the movie portrays him as just an average Christian standing up to ****, and you just have to take its word that he's really as great as it says he is. If you have already read some of his works or read a biography or a couple of articles about Bonhoeffer, then laying this groundwork is unnecessary because you know. But you cannot assume as a director that other people are as intimately familiar with a person as you are, especially when it comes at the cost of developing that character and really losing the impact of his life on those who are not as knowledgeable. One final note is that the movie is cheapened a bit by the opening director note and the ending qr code on the screen for the entirety of the credits. Overall, I give it positive points for the story it's telling and the person it's telling it about. But the production and execution was quite lackluster, so while it is a movie worth seeing, I would not recommend you go out of your way to see it.