Taylor-Johnson certainly looks the part and he throws himself into the role full force, unfortunately a lot of his choices just don't really make sense or make for an actual human character. He uses a bizarre American accent the cadence of which is(weirdly) pure John Wayne. DeBose is in the movie very little and she and we the audience are confused by what purpose she is suppose to serve. Hechinger has had a good year and it's nice to see him so much, I'd take him over Austin Butler or Chalamet any day of the week, but he doesn't do much here. Crowe is having a ball and absolutely making a meal out of his Russian accent, the story may be convoluted and dumb, the majority of the actors may seem lost, but Crowe give you your money's worth. The same is true of the heavy Nivola who gives, the most bizarre, idiosyncratic, performance in any major release this year. The cast has talent but, similar to Gladiator II, the directing is absent, there is no one facilitating the casts performances, they are all seemingly in different movies and only the real seasoned pros(Crowe and Nivola) can make any sense of it.
The visuals are mostly generic with some really terrible CGI animals. There are a couple solid, surprisingly gory, action sequences but there aren't enough of them, the movie doesn't really take full advantage of its R rating. The other glaring problem is the ADR, there are multiple scenes where the dialogue is out of sync to such a degree it's laughable. The script itself is the other main offender. There's just no life to it, not enough fun, not enough ingenuity, too convoluted. It's clear it was commissioned by an executive(not a creative) and probably half a dozen screenwriters(or more) 'took a pass at it' and the end result is this pastiche of vague ideas rather than a coherent narrative. Watching it it feels like an elevator pitch.
Teetering on the so-bad-it's-good edge, destined to be a streaming hit.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
Stream It.
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