I pride myself in not ever fast forwarding a movie that I've started to watch. Often there is something that catches my eye or a feeling that I like. On those rare occasions when there is nothing of those things mentioned above present, I still feel like I owe it to the creators and craftsmen of the movie to watch it in full to the end. This is the first movie where I've partially has abandoned this principle of mine.
In my opinion all that is wrong with this picture stems from one thing: bad directing. For example, what seems like bad acting is in fact a lack of directing. The actors are left swinging in the wind. The helping hand a director is supposed to give its cast members is nowhere to be seen. What is my motivation? Why do I do this? What are my reasons for behaving this way? The list of questions an actor should be able to get help answering, can be endless. In this movie it doesn't matter if it was the shortest list ever conceived, no help was given. The result is cardboard characters that no one cares about and we, the audience, least of all.
Could the writing be bad? Perhaps it is. But still, with a capable director this could have been an OK movie. The story is interesting, though not exciting, and could've made a decent race-against-time type of film.
A capable director would have realised early in preproduction that the estimated runtime was way too long for this story and would have cut it to half of what it is now. Or at least they would have realised in postproduction that it wasn't working in the estimated length. As it is now there are so many overlong scenes that fill no purpose that you start wondering if it is a work in progress copy you're watching.
And this is the reason why I put my finger on the fast forward button and let things unfold in 8 times normal speed. Still I felt like I had sped through too little.
In my opinion all that is wrong with this picture stems from one thing: bad directing. For example, what seems like bad acting is in fact a lack of directing. The actors are left swinging in the wind. The helping hand a director is supposed to give its cast members is nowhere to be seen. What is my motivation? Why do I do this? What are my reasons for behaving this way? The list of questions an actor should be able to get help answering, can be endless. In this movie it doesn't matter if it was the shortest list ever conceived, no help was given. The result is cardboard characters that no one cares about and we, the audience, least of all.
Could the writing be bad? Perhaps it is. But still, with a capable director this could have been an OK movie. The story is interesting, though not exciting, and could've made a decent race-against-time type of film.
A capable director would have realised early in preproduction that the estimated runtime was way too long for this story and would have cut it to half of what it is now. Or at least they would have realised in postproduction that it wasn't working in the estimated length. As it is now there are so many overlong scenes that fill no purpose that you start wondering if it is a work in progress copy you're watching.
And this is the reason why I put my finger on the fast forward button and let things unfold in 8 times normal speed. Still I felt like I had sped through too little.
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