I had high hopes for this with Soderbergh directing and Clooney and Blanchett in it. Tobey Maguire, with his boyish face and languid acting style was just completely unbelievable in his role. His character was so prominent, it made the film unwatchable. I shut it off after ~30 minutes. This is easily the worst 30 minutes of any film that I've seen this year.
shareI struggled with the first 40 minutes myself, but then it started to come together (as a good noir movie should) and I suddenly actually cared about the characters and was really intrigued by what was going on. The screenplay completely nailed it, where a lot of other movies with the same sort espionage-esque, who's-good-and-who's-bad have just been boring. If I had turned off at the 30 minute mark I would have given it a 4, I've rated it a 9 after seeing the whole thing.
shareIf you had stuck with it, it might have been better. I think Tobey Maguire was really off-putting in this.
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me too i thought it should be good old style movie making...in fact i waited and waited for something to happen and the movie meandered i finally turned it off
shareI think the whole point is that the character was a clueless pipsqueak, but he could play at being a pimp and a hustler because of the special circumstances of war.
shareThe pipsqueak says, "Money lets you be who you really are."
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
I've tried to finish this movie three times now, but was too unengaged by the plot and put off by the crass and inappropriate language and violence interwoven with the classic studio filmmaking grammer. Funny how Clooney and Soderbergh were instrumental in getting the rapturous and spot-on tribute Far from Heaven made and end up trashing the aesthetic of that era in their own production. Maybe it isn't fair criticizing a movie I have yet to finish, but the hour I did see was a great enough miscalculation of Michael Curtiz to make me press stop and spend my time elsewhere.
shareI get what they were going for. They got all their bases covered, but it was slow even for Film Noir. Tobey Maguire and his weird way of swearing and playing a role that didn't really fit him. He was broad,just so very broad. Even when I was getting into the story following Clooney's character.I'd get interested and then Maguire showed up and I was out It would have been half decent without him.
There's playing someone you love to hate. Then there's playing someone you just hate.
no wonder it tanked at the box office! Serves them right for filming in black and white! What they should have done is film two versions-one in colour and the other in black and white!
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