The cast are phenomenal. You can make fun of the accents all you want, but at least they tried instead of just doing British accents as sub ins for everything. I think the major issue is that each actor has a voice so well defined that it's jarring to hear them doing something so broadly different. Adam Driver is on another level from any of his contemporaries. He's charming, shy, powerful, weak, fragile yet unshakeable. He can so easily play hero or villain and always delivers. Lady Gaga is good in the movie, and she has a lot to play, but I'd be lying if I said this was a real home run. There's a little bit of Ally in her that I just assume is inexperience. Where she really comes alive are in her scenes with Driver. They have such unique chemistry that reads as very manipulative and toxic, but also somewhat genuine. The scenes where she has to cry become less and less genuine in a very compelling way. It's not said enough how good Jeremy Irons is, and for his short time on screen I'm still thinking about his performance, and Al Pacino has entered something of a career renaissance. The movie is sort of dragged out, it could probably lose about 20 minutes, but there really is an easy fix for that. Cut everything to do with Jared Leto. I'm not even joking, before Jared Leto's first scene I had no problems with this movie. I've got no hate towards Jared Leto as a whole, but ever since he won an Oscar, he's been putting on these horrendous displays of vanity and ego. He is done up in so much makeup with this awful hairpiece, and he looks like a MadTv character. His accent is the only one in the cast that goes full Mario, with every single word being given the most Italian accent you've ever heard. He is the Jar Jar Binks of this movie, whenever he's on screen it is lowest common denominator jokes and absolute farce. There are a couple of scenes where he's ok, and those are the scenes where he just talks to people normally, but for the majority of the film he is this glaring, catastrophic, presence who draws attention to himself. There are some pacing issues, the film jumps around a bit, and certain events are glossed over until the epilogue. Although none of that distracted from my overall enjoyment of the film. Like All the Money in the World, Ridley Scott knows how to balance absurdist one percenter satire and crime thriller in a way that really hits the sweet spot for me.
Review of House of Gucci
