nosecohn

*Minimal spoilers follow* I really disliked this movie. Stylistically, the long sweeping shots of scenic vistas without dialog are aesthetically pleasing, but style cannot substitute for lack of story. By the 90-minute mark, I was done with it. Sadly, it went on for another hour. This flaw in pacing was not helped by the absolutely terrible score. It's clear there was a deliberate choice to go minimalistic, but it just didn't work. If you're going to make a two and-a-half hour movie that's anchored by long shots without dialog, the least you can do is help the audience feel like things are moving along by putting some excitement into the music. The way it's directed and edited, every single character for whom the audience starts to feel sympathy soon gets killed, and always through no fault of their own. It's as if the director delights in repeated fatalistic displays of the world's moral failings. After the first hour, I was so depressed I wanted to shoot myself. And in the end, what is it about? Getting from point A to point B without getting killed in order to exact revenge? The payoff was in no way worth the investment of time, emotion and boredom. If I had seen this in the theater, I would have walked out. Also, if you're an animal lover, do yourself a favor and do *not* see this movie. No fewer than five large mammals are killed on screen, and none in self-defense. Because I enjoyed some of the cinematography and performances, I'll give it a 2/10. Otherwise, it would have been a 1.

This is 90 minutes of movie with 20 minutes of story. The rest is just a National Geographic film set to some pleasant music. It has a couple nice moments, but would have been much better as a short.

First of all, this film is beautifully shot and the filmmakers manage to capture a lot of truth. If there's a "message," it's that, in an age of absentee parents, skater culture, pink hair and noserings, there's still an innocence to youth. Relationships develop at their own pace and in their own ways, and they can end up stronger for it. The idea that there's an explicitly Christian message doesn't really hold up, because at times the church isn't even portrayed in a particularly positive light. At its core, this is just a lovely little character study.

The opposite of a date movie... this is more like a "never date" movie. The couple at the center of the story get into an argument 30 seconds into the film and the squabbling never lets up. Eighty minutes in, one of their kids says, "I'm sick of everybody fighting." I couldn't have agreed more. Although it's true that a story needs to have some conflict to be interesting, the mistake Apatow makes here is thinking that more conflict means more interesting. Sitting through over two hours of miserable people blaming each other for their miserable lives is far closer to torture than entertainment.

I really enjoyed the first two-thirds of this movie. It was filled with intrigue, complexity and character development. They also did a masterful job of weaving the timeline into the end of the previous movie in the series. But like so many of these spy thrillers, it degenerated into one long chase scene at the end. And when the movie ended, I was thinking, "That's it?" Clearly, they're setting it up to continue the series, but the ending was a real letdown. After building such great tension between all the characters, we're left with zero resolution.

If ever a movie was in need of some judicious editing to correct pacing and story issues, this is it. With riveting performances from an all-star cast and an interesting plot, it had the potential to be great entertainment on many levels. But post-production choices by director Mann turned this into an unwieldy two hour and forty minute beast. Everything just goes on too long, underscored by a narcotic soundtrack that leaves the audience twitching in their seats instead of on the edge of their seats. The turning point scene where the two main characters first meet face-to-face should have been a cerebral break in the action and relationship drama, but instead comes after many minutes of plodding, unnecessary footage. The ending was also a huge letdown considering how much the proficiencies of both main characters had been built up over the course of the film. Still, there are some great individual performances and scenes in this film, so I'm giving it a rating that makes it worth watching, though not a must see. 6/10.