I love that they made an historically accurate film that shows all sides. I just wish that I didn't have to stop myself from laughing throughout. Uneven cinematography and horrible acting made worse by a truly unbelievable script. Very sad.
sharealso the whole friendship was very unbelievable after the jew killed arab's uncle. after that scene whenever they met in the middle of the battle, they tried to save each other's life. that looks like a stupid fairy tale for kids.
not a good movie at all.
agree with the OP 100%
shareI don't think the actors should be blamed. There are some very good actors in there.
The problem is just that, as you've said, the script is just absolutely terrible. I mean, how could they NOT look silly, pronouncing those lines?
JJ Feild is usually wonderful, and even Patrick Bruel isn't bad. But there's only so much you can do when the dialogues are awful, when there's no sense of pace or tension... I mean, even Sir Ian Holm looked silly, it was embarrassing to watch!
It doesn't help that a lot of them are obviously very uncomfortable with English, and the fact that their lines are written in textbook English makes them sound even less authentic. People who are that bad at speaking English would never use the words that were being put in their mouths.
And in general, most characters just sounded like talking books... No one talks like this in real life... It's full of cheesy, explanatory statements about peace, and war, and land... And instead of doing this through emotion, subtlety, atmospheres... they just explain, and explain, and explain...
And God, how many scenes did we see of guys emphatically shouting at people (attempts at inspirational speeches I suppose)?
It was just shouting, shouting and more shouting. I guess the idea was to try and create drama and pathos, but it only had the opposite effect on me. A guy shouting to a crowd is exciting to watch, provided there's a build up and a contrast with the rest of the movie. Otherwise... it just gets really heavy.
And the character development... At the very beginning there were a couple of good scenes, when they were trying to build the friendship, but then it completely stopped.
Bobby and Saïd never really had any meaningful conversation, or anything that would justify their friendship being so strong.
The same is true of Bobby and his girlfriend, it was very very poorly written. And yet, I liked both actors. But you don't see their love growing, and you don't see it developing, so that final scene, well... it felt really overwrought.
The use of music was also terrible, instead of making it emotional for me, it just made everything look even more pompous... I don't know why, I'm very sensitive to soundtracks, and in this case, everytime the music started, it took me out of the movie instead of drawing me in.
Well, I guess you never realize how difficult it must be to make a good film, except when you see a bad one.
At least I've learned a couple of things about this conflict. I guess that's something.