Thought Chasm

If i were to force myself into summing this film up into one word it’d be quite easy; disappointing. There’s nothing about it that met my expectations and i intentionally set them low. I knew before i started the film that it wouldn’t be conspiracy laced like JFK [[ even though i have yet to see it ]], but i didn’t realize it would be so painfully patriotic or come off so forced. The acting is decent, the portrayals are likely realistic, and at points it’s very intense, but beyond that i haven’t seen many films more forced.

What is so despicable about this depiction of true events is the absurdity of the first half of the film and the utter length of the second. It starts well enough, slowly building a cast of characters with subtle cues. Then things take a turn. The main characters are made obvious immediately, and if you couldn’t keep up they had separate shots of each police officer as he closed his locker prepared for work [[ literally: boom, boom, boom we have a primary cast ]]. As the events of the day advance, the play-by-play is excruciatingly coerced from the secondary cast in a series of conversations and news reports.

Stone uses obligatory slow-motion shots in order to further intensify the tragic sequence of events that left thousands of people lost. There’s nothing like Cage yelling in slow-action to get me laughing out loud. The action sequences themselves are done well. The effects are solid and it drew me into the film even while the emotional undertones were taking me out. He creates a claustrophobic feeling with tight shots and low light. It achieves the desired effect of creating a closeness with the characters and pulling on my empathy. Unfortunately the dialog, flashback sequences [[ circa ladder 49 ]], and hard-sell emotional scenes were so chintzy it became almost unbearable [[ and I'm just off watching employee of the month ]].

I guess this is a good follow-up to Alexander for him; being that it’s emotionally ridiculous with small sparks of what the story could have been. There are shots, like one with cops in Sheboygan, that are completely worthless. They seem to be there just to develop the emotional current that the nation was confronting, but he splices in real-world action that depicts the effect much faster. I’m glad he didn’t overuse the file footage though, because it helped to show the narrative as it was meant to: in the perspective of McLoughlin and Jimeno.

What the film does to incredibly well is reinforce how we squandered so much global support in such a short period of time. The film is successful in portraying how our nation felt as well as showing on a global scale the reactions to the attack. The humorous part about this success is that i don’t know if it was at all intentional. united 93 did a much better job portraying the mood on that day and displaying the better aspects of humanity that came from the horrific attack. Watch that one before this one, but this one still isn’t bad enough for me to tell people not to see it. It’s just not worth paying for.

**

i would like to start this off a bit different; as an open letter of thanks to a few people.

I’d like to thank the religious right and some pissed off Jewish folk for giving the borderline-insane Mel Gibson the finances to go it alone on this film. Without your donations to his cause, given so generously in order to have concrete examples when bitching to anyone who’d listen, I’d never have been able to see this one. Plus, if you hadn’t given him your money he probably wouldn’t have gone clinical.

I would also like to thank you for your protests and rants in the public eye that sparked the curiosity in the sheep. It couldn’t have been just your pockets being drained to reach the $370,271,000 total in this great nation. Yes, the Passion sucked, but that didn’t seem to stop bible-thumpers and controversy-fiends from lining Gibson’s wallet. And without your help this movie would have been shut down faster than rocky VI [[ whoops, well that's what should have happened anyway ]].

Thanks again,
Me

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into this. The film itself isn’t that bad. As long as you don’t consider dialog, story, or directing. I guess that brings it down to being a pretty movie. I guess you’ll have that when you shoot in a jungle and try to make it as period-accurate as possible. If you get beyond the leafy backdrop and the primitive surroundings and wooden jewelry and National Geographic style toplessness, what are you left with?

The directing is about as text book as you can get. And this is assuming Gibson has read one, because it appears he just copies everything he’s seen done in quality films. There are contrived close-ups, slow-motion, and action sequences drag in order to manufacture suspense. This works in a film like braveheart where there’s enough action on the peripherals to draw focus away from such mediocre attempts at drama. When you only have a small pack of actors in a series of shots the focus must be on them and because of this, in movies like this one and passion, the strategies become ridiculous. I don’t know if i could have taken anymore ‘still camera high speed action’ shots. The shots that resemble something out of beach were a waste of a camera rigging.

The story is impressive. It even starts out well enough for the first hour. Then it sort of gets out of hand. It involves prophecy, destiny, foreshadow, impending doom, violence, triumph, love, sickness, revenge, ancient culture, cunning, and a side of dead language [[ apparently a Gibson favorite ]]. Basically it’s like the two writers [[ he took on a no-name guy to help... probably with grammar. Get it? Dead language... grammar... whatever ]] took turns with darts aiming at a board covered in post-it notes where successful writing strategies were written. Throw the dart, hit romance, and you have yourself a subplot. There is so much packed into this movie that it’s almost comical by the climax. So as I said, the story is impressive.

As far as acting, I have to admit it’s a minor bright spot. Not that it’s great, but it’s not horrible and in some moments can be arresting. The character development is done well, but only because they are so iconic someone watching has no choice but to associate with them. The dialog is dry and ordinary. Most of the story relies on acting cues and body language, which at least makes it easy to follow. If it weren’t for the tits [[ because this is America and you have to be thirteen to see a boob ]] and the signature over-the-top violence [[ Gibson is definitely in a different school of thought than Hitchcock... probably in the same class with Eli Roth actually ]], this would be on the level of a children’s movie.

I downloaded passion and probably could have waited to do the same with this one. I’m concerned that Gibson got lucky with Braveheart and people are concentrating too much on him being a Jew-hating-drunk and not enough on how horrendous his movies are. At least he still made a few million profit to finance his next pile of feces.

sidenote: i should critique movies more harshly on here. Seems like i always end up liking them. This was wicked fun.

**

To start, this film has got an interesting visual style. They spent a lot of energy making it appear as though it was an old movie. archaic wipes, sepia-esque color throughout, and an keen eye for detail. There are sequences meant to simulate watching deteriorated film on an old projector. i guess in some ways it works for the film, but whether it works or not, it adds at least a bold visual interest. it’s a mediocre period piece, but fun to watch.

In regard to the performances, norton did a pretty good job. he’s no christian bale, but he played his character well. giamatti does a great job. he always does a great job though, but since sideways he’s being recognized for it. this was a much better choice than the one that followed it << see lady in the water >>. and really whatever role he’s in, sewell creeps me out.

For one of those “reveal it all in the end” Ah Ha! moments it was a little too low on Ah Ha!, but there was enough gas in it to make it worthwhile. The visual clues throughout were less subtle than i would have liked. The story itself is strong, filled with romance and slight of hand, so to speak. It traverses the various plot twists easily without slowing pace.

The only part that tweaked my nerve was the incomplete aspect of the final reveal. Act III grows with intensity and the resolution is neither cheesy or overdone, but yet there’s an itch to know more about his final show. It may have been left ambiguous intentionally, as he is a magician and doesn’t show the “how”, but it’s much like the envelope from departed that left me wanting more.

There are similarities between this and prestige only in the broadest “he’s a magician” terms. This was a story built on love as that was a story built on revenge. The characters are not as strongly developed in this one and the story is a bit too foreseeable for me to regard it as high as prestige, but it is entertaining.

***