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timjimharrison
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Allied (2016)
Romance or Spy Thriller? Turns out, neither
Moderate drama, moderate romance, moderate war-time spy thriller. An excellent cast let down by uneven pacing and a weak script. Great actors like Anton Lessing criminally under used. I simply didn't believe the romance, the connection, between Pitt and Cottilard - they meet in Casablanca but "Casablanca" this ain't. The bold attempt to revive the cigarette as suggestion for allure/sex/whatever just didn't work.
Goofs aplenty too. Far too many instances of black-out flouting without any remonstrance by ARP wardens. No one in London appears to have their gas mask with them. The SOE ambassadorial assassination went like clockwork, some no SOE operation in occupied territory ever did the reality was more Keystone Cops with bloodshed than James Bond.
Pitt's trip to France can only have a desperate attempt to add some inane action to keep the war film fanboys onside.
I feel sure there was a better film left on the cutting room floor or abandoned at the storyboard stage. Tragic.
Hit Man (2023)
Great NO Music, morally bankrupt, perplexing and empty
Comedy? Erm... not really.
Couldn't really reconcile the notion that a professor of philosophy and psychology could, in the end, be happy shacking up with a murderess and sealing the deal with an unjustified murder himself - his victim though unpleasant doesn't do anything to justify being killed other than to avoid his blackmail and/or the protagonists going to jail.
In a black comedy, this set up might be supportable, engaging the viewer's indulgence but here there really isn't any comedy, black or otherwise, so the viewer somehow has to be ok with an unpleasant character being offed and two slightly less unpleasant characters getting away with it.
The producers seem to have taken a real person's double career and, in order to spice up the story, taken a big murderous dump over it to zero positive effect. Perplexing and rather vacuous.
Badland (2019)
Heroically Hopeless and Hypnotic Oater
Sometimes one can't stop watching a dreadful film because of its charming incompetence.
This film is hopelessly miscast, the script is portentously clunky and the direction amateurish but the earnestness of all involved is somehow winning. No cliche goes unvisited: the sub-Eastwood hero collecting his hat from the saloon floor when one would think he'd have more important things on his mind; the desperately put-upon womenfolk oppressed by evil men; the arrogance of said men clearly underestimating the moral giant in their midst;
The clearly tacked-on and drama-free inclusion of the two black guys directing the avenging angel is inexplicable in terms other than a typically heavy-handed Hollywood didactic hectoring of the audience in the aftermath of BLM albeit one employing a white saviour and thus demonstrating America to be a largely irony-free zone.
Here's a guy who's been riding and searching for war criminals (their crimes undefined) for over a year yet whose mare appears to have a brand new bridle and saddle. No old tack to be had at the prop store?
The score/soundtrack is bland whilst the sound technician must have been fresh from film college having skipped a few classes on spacing and clarity.
Nobody could watch this film and Unforgiven and remain unable to identify meaningful differences in every aspect of film-making - so it is a useful product from that perspective.
Im Westen nichts Neues (2022)
Travesty of a classic anti-war novel
Director far too keen to introduce clunking messages and portents into the story as though Erich Maria Remarque had lacked for something when he wrote the novel - sheesh. There ought to be a law against using the title of a novel for a film so far removed from it. On the plus side the fighting is visceral and accords with firsthand accounts.
One last disappointment was the railway carriage scenes at Compiegne - though clearly intended to underline the futility of further fighting it managed to both foreshadow and, bizarrely, support the "stab in the back" Nazi narrative but also suggest a moral superiority for he German negotiators. I mean, Really?!?