Reviews by:
@theplokoonyreview
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Positives:
Christian Bale plays to the concept of the film phenomenally, and the introduction is enticing.
Negatives:
The fight scenes clash with the rest of the films tone, the world is ugly, the scope of the world isn’t well defined, while the second half is rushed and remarkably messy.
Positive: Christian Bale
Christian Bale works with the stories concept (it is against the law to feel emotion) and all the difficulties that come with this involving characterization. By channeling a genuine, childlike fascination with his emotions, while also using subtle, pained mannerisms to bring to light his conflicted feelings he elevates both his character and the whole film. Even when it becomes much more ridiculous later on and many events don’t have the development they needed, Bale keeps himself deeply invested in the role and delivers consistently fantastic character moments. If it should categorized as anything, this film is a testament to Bale’s abilities as a method character.
Positive: The Introduction
The introduction does it job with precise concision. In the rundown building it starts at (and up to around the 12 minute mark) the film surprises and engages the viewer with its premise. It’s handled very delicately in the beginning, much of the world is shrouded in mystery, and slowly but powerfully developed by the cutthroat attitude of the Clerics and more specifically Preston (Christian Bale). Also, there’s a fantastic use of drawn out darkness during a fight scene at the beginning, it’s a more experimental decision but it heavily paid off and the movie could’ve benefitted from more creatively executed scenes like this.
Negative: Gunplay
The fight scenes succeed in looking moderately cool, but when compared with the rest of the world end up feeling corny. In a colourless world where emotion is banned and the tone is bleak, the combination of guns and Kung fu sticks out as a more horribly misguided attempt to be stylish. This fighting technique could’ve been used to help build the world, but the concept of gun fu (called Gun Kata in the film) in a world such as this just dampens the horrors of the dystopia and adds an unfitting element of campiness. Furthermore, Preston is much too overpowered for any of these fights to have any suspense, weight, or slight realism. His ability to mow through every enemy with no trouble is amusing on a surface level, but in doing so it sacrifices any intelligence it could’ve had.
Negative: Ugly World
The world almost never looks good. Either it’s a painfully obvious and drab cgi landscape that has all the detailed textures of a PS2 game cutscene, or a cheaply constructed set that looks fake and uninspired. It can be argued this is all to construct a world which has had the life drained from it and passion stripped from its architecture, but there are many better ways to do this while making the set look palatable. As it stands, all that is shown through the world is a poor understanding of cgi and rushed set designs with no memorable qualities.
Negatives: Scope of the world
This film delivers its premise in a remarkably soulless way (just explaining to the viewer through monologue) but then it doesn’t answer many questions, rather just supplying generalizations. This becomes a problem later on, it’s hard to understand how big Libria or the Nether is and furthermore the size of any threat, like the resistance or even the people in power. It leaves the viewer unable to understand what’s truly at stake and a lot of contextual information is absent when it was needed for moments to properly land.
Negative: Last Half
The second half introduces and rushes through sub plots while overcomplicating everything. It’s an unwelcome change of pace from the first act, which acted as more of a slow paced character study. To twist everything in such a rushed and unpolished direction killed any shot it had at being good. It’s hard to explain what actually happened without this entire section turning into spoilers, so it’ll be left at this. It’s hard to invest in anything that’s happening because it’s switching between different events so quickly and awkwardly, characters are wasted or not given enough time to gain a remarkable presence, while it horribly over complicates itself in both regards and any emotional impact or investment in the plot is lost.
In conclusion, despite a promising beginning and Christian Bales fantastic performance, this film has too many glaring flaws and outright confusing decisions that leave the viewer upset that they wasted time with it or amused by its absurdity.
Critical rating: 4.5/10
Entertainment rating: 7/10
Final rating: 5/10
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