Archive for category: Reviews

As much as I admire, and in awe of, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, this wasn’t much of a movie. It was static, very limited in scope and didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. How did Snowden get everything and take it with him to Hong Kong? How could he communicate it to Greenwald so quickly? And most of all, how could Greenwald understand everything so easily and translate it into comprehensible stories for the public? The brief glimpses we were given of the outside world – government officials testifying, CNN reporting – were teasingly brief. To me, this film was more document than documentary.

Once one accepted that this was a stage play, not a docudrama, the philosophical back-and-forth between German General Chotlitz and Swedish Consul Nordling could be appreciated as an intellectual exploration of human motives, rather than a somewhat incredible portrayal of how Paris was saved from Nazi destruction. There was no reason Chotlitz would have allowed Nordling’s presence for a movie-long dialogue, but the set-up allowed us to analyze and weigh the thought processes of a Nazi commander and the wall between soldier and human. Personally, I didn’t find Chotlitz’s change of heart credible: the reasons for his change were present from the beginning, although they were a surprise when revealed to us near the end. We were equally unprepared for the sudden resistance of the collaborating French architect that effectively saved the city. (Since all these figures lived many years after the war, perhaps there is a more factual basis to the dramatization than I allow.)

Considering this film took place at night, in stressful situations, featuring many working stiffs, in a very noir setting, it was remarkable that no one smoked. Maybe, then, it was no coincidence that at the very end of the credits, where they usually disclaim hurting any animals during filming, there was a line that no money was received for placing tobacco in the film. Is this a new cause? Or are they saying that no one smoked because no one offered them any money?
Jake Gyllenhaal’s bug eyes and intense characterization were wonderful, although you wondered why someone with his ambition and instincts was only clipping chain-link fences when the story began. The cheap swipe at TV news was fun, even if there was only a kernel of truth in it; what drove the movie was Gyllenhaal’s depiction of Louis Bloom’s flowering, petal by petal, picking up something from every contact, morality be damned, and getting away with it.

The movie delivered on the book’s strengths – original plot, interesting characters – as well as its weakness – a frustratingly unsatisfying ending. It’s hard to know how someone who hadn’t read the book would have been affected by the plot twists and turns; for us, we watched and mentally checked off how Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, et al., matched up with the memory of our reading experience. The long movie time went by quickly.

Atmosphere, characters and great acting – what more could you want? A plot that makes sense? Nah, just keep us guessing and move it along, a la Lehane’s earlier Shutter Island. (I mean, why would a punk keep wearing a broken watch?) Tom Hardy’s near-autistic bartender was astonishing: you could read the blankness behind his eyes. John Ortiz was just as good at showing the cop’s intelligence and James Gandolfini fell in between, smarter than the average, but not smart enough. And when you need to personify malevolent violence, it’s nice that we now have Chechens. But mostly we were on edge the whole dark movie, which is a good night out.