Christian Bale makes the movie

Christian Bale is an amazing talent. He is one of the few actors that can single handedly save a film just by his presence. When I heard that David Ayer, creator of Training Day, was behind this movie I thought, well at least there will be a good screenplay. While Ayer did come up with some good concepts his script is flawed in many ways. The dialogue is over the top and feels forced many times. It was also repetitive seeing as how the only thing that people talked about in this movie was sex, money, and guns over and over again. I felt the slang and lingo used in Training Day was believable but in this the characters sounded like clowns some times. The narrative had nothing new to offer the genera and hardly had any real focus.

Leave it to Christian Bale to step in and to give a little life to the film. There certainly wasn't much on the page for Bale to work with. His character was written to be a stereotype and a total jerk. Some how though Bale injected humanity and depth into what would have been a one dimensional character otherwise. What Bale seemed to bring to it is the idea that this man's violent experiences in Iraq have made his psyche shatter into three separate personas. There is the vulnerable persona that he seems to only really show to his Mexican fiancé. Then there is the tough bad ass persona that he holds up when he's around his friends. Then there is the respectable duty bound soldier persona that he slips into when dealing with his career. These personas are all like masks that he uses to cover the primal rage that manifested itself in Iraq. Some times his personas, or masks, fall down when presented with violence or disappointment and the rage spills out. While I think Ayer intended this when writing the script, I think that Bale took the concept much farther than what was written. There were so many subtle little moments and little looks that he would give. There is a moment near the midway point where Freddy Rodriguez's and Bale's characters witnesses a scene of extreme violence. There is a split second when Bale looks very disturbed by what he's witnessing. Then he very quickly retreats back into his bad ass persona and even brags to Rodriguez about how unaffected he was by the violence. Though as the audience we know there is more going on in this guys head then he cares to admit to his friends. He is suffering from intense nightmares and post traumatic stress syndrome. He tries to act like he isn't affected by violence yet when confronted with violence he looks sick to his stomach. It seems all he wanted was to settle down with his fiancé and get a stable job in the city. When he finds out that his career is forcing him back into danger and that he can't escape his violent past is when he really begins to break down psychologically.

With out Bales performance, this film would have been forgettable. I think Ayer had a good concept but his writing and direction seems to indicate that he didn't know how to explore it correctly. This could have been a much better film if they made it more of a character piece and focused more on Bale's psychological breakdown. Instead Ayer wastes time with having his characters spend a large portion of the film trying to sell a gun and discussing all of the same topics that come up in these type of films. It seemed that Bale knew where the strength of the film was, even if Ayer didn't, and he tried his best to bring attention to it through the subtleties of his performance. The one thing that Ayer did do very effectively though is one of the last scenes near the end of the film. I'm not one to get emotional during movies but that was hard to watch. Considering how despicable Bale's character was written to be, it says a lot about how great of an actor he is that in the final moments of the film he makes you feel great sympathy for his character.