Rating of
2.5/4
Mediocre, Yet Still Entertaining
mitchellyoung - wrote on 08/08/11
This is an extremely frustrating film, a movie that creatively combines two popular genres but suffers from a lack of focus and originality that plagues the entire film. The movie starts out promising, with a wordless and extremely bad-ass introduction to Daniel Craig, but, the pace of the film becomes clear soon after. Brutal and engrossing action sequences are often followed by long periods of dialogue and, for lack of a better word, "walking" scenes that drag to no end. The performances are strong across the board. Daniel Craig channels what he does best - kick ass - and Harrison Ford is gruff and angry, totally bypassing his Indiana Jones persona. Paul Dano also stood out to me as a wormy wanna-be outlaw (at least for the first half of the film - the character, like several others in the movie suffers from a severe absence of character arc.) The film's main problem is its surprising reliance on cliches from both genres. There are plenty of groanworthy lines and moments that you can see coming a mile away. These moments confused me,a s you would think a script from the masterminds behind "Lost" would be a little more elaborate. I expect more than lines like, "She's in a better place now." The film shines during the action sequences, of course, since, after all, that is what it is really about. I don't mean to say the film isn't entertaining - it is very entertaining - but only that it will frustrate true film buffs who desire more character development and less reliance on contrivance and coincidence to succeed.
