BEFORE: Chris Cooper carries over from "Jarhead", and I'm back on track. Got my caffeinated diet soda and since it's a holiday weekend, I'm caught up on sleep, so I have a better chance of staying awake through this one.
AFTER: Ugh, I feel like I didn't get this one at all - or maybe there was nothing to get. This is supposed to be one of those films like "Crash" or "Babel" where we marvel at how interconnected every little event is - but unless you're a Political Science major, you probably won't find the individual events themselves interesting.
Oh, things do happen - oil companies merge, an American economist advises an Arab prince, a CIA agent is sent to assassinate that same prince, and a lawyer investigates whether the merger is legal. Meanwhile, there's a missing missile and a tragic incident in a swimming pool. The question then becomes, do these elements add up to a coherent whole, or not? Considering that I had to look up the plot summary online to even form the last few sentences, then I'm going with "No".
Unless the point is to prove how complicated and hard to understand politics are in the Mideast, then I'm not getting it - even so, that's no excuse to make a complicated and hard to understand film. Or is it? If "Jarhead" was about how pointless war is in the Middle East and its relation to oil, this is a pointless film about oil in the Middle East and its relation to war.
The theme of the week seems to be torture - Jackie Robinson endured psychological torture from racist baseball fans, the killer in "Alex Cross" was a fan of torture techniques, and then they popped up again in "Prisoners". In "Jarhead", Marine recruits endured the torture of basic training, and then this film was like torture to watch. Just kidding, someone in this film gets waterboarded and physically tortured, so yeah, it's a fun week here at the Movie Year.
Also starring George Clooney (last seen in "Solaris"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Rounders"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"), Amanda Peet (last seen in "Something's Gotta Give"), Christopher Plummer (last seen in "Must Love Dogs"), Alexander Siddig (last seen in "Clash of the Titans"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "The Thin Red Line"), William Hurt (last seen in "Lost in Space"), Viola Davis (last seen in "Prisoners"), Mark Strong (last seen in "Zero Dark Thirty"), Robert Foxworth, Peter Gerety (last seen in "Flight"), Jamey Sheridan (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), David Clennon (last seen in "Coming Home"), with cameos from Will McCormack, Thomas McCarthy.
RATING: 3 out of 10 strips of soy bacon
No comments:
Post a Comment