This film had so many good things and so many bad things. To start with the good, Shailene Woodley is great. Some of her best work comes when she's listening to others. The camera hovers on her face and without doing much she draws the viewer in. There are also some really tense scenes and Woodley's character does some clever stuff in high pressure situations. Ben Mendelson is watchable but it's hard to work out his character's motivation most of the time. He just does what the script wants him to do.
But on the downside, the third act is so tonally out of sync with everything that came before that the film was ruined for me. There is also some laughable dialogue throughout the film. It's as if someone wrote a great script then a bunch of other people rewrote chunks of it and added in some ludicrous soundbites. Then there's the political messages rammed down the viewers throat, often these are irrelevant to the plot - someone just wanted to get their views in there. One senses that the filmmakers wanted everyone to know how evil eating meat is. We're also treated to a scene of a gay couple eating dinner, which adds nothing to the plot at all. And there's some preaching about guns and mental health - important issues but none of it was done with any subtlety or finesse. It should have worked, but it was handled so badly.
I also found some of the camerawork distracting. It was like being constantly reminded that you are watching a film. Whenever I was getting absorbed in the story the camerawork would pull me back out.
There's also a bunch of scenes that add nothing to the story and serve only to slow the pace down. In particular, we get scenes showing Woodley in the bath, on the toilet and in a swimming pool. One wonders who insisted on filming these scenes and why? At least in 80's movies they just told actresses to get their boobs out. This feels like voyeurism for the benefit of someone on the production.
The final thing that really bugged me was the mumbled dialogue. Characters talk fast and with the weird phrases they spout out it was so hard to hear what they were saying. I had to put subtitles on, something I have never had to do before in any film.
Overall, this is a big disappointment because it had such great potential.
But on the downside, the third act is so tonally out of sync with everything that came before that the film was ruined for me. There is also some laughable dialogue throughout the film. It's as if someone wrote a great script then a bunch of other people rewrote chunks of it and added in some ludicrous soundbites. Then there's the political messages rammed down the viewers throat, often these are irrelevant to the plot - someone just wanted to get their views in there. One senses that the filmmakers wanted everyone to know how evil eating meat is. We're also treated to a scene of a gay couple eating dinner, which adds nothing to the plot at all. And there's some preaching about guns and mental health - important issues but none of it was done with any subtlety or finesse. It should have worked, but it was handled so badly.
I also found some of the camerawork distracting. It was like being constantly reminded that you are watching a film. Whenever I was getting absorbed in the story the camerawork would pull me back out.
There's also a bunch of scenes that add nothing to the story and serve only to slow the pace down. In particular, we get scenes showing Woodley in the bath, on the toilet and in a swimming pool. One wonders who insisted on filming these scenes and why? At least in 80's movies they just told actresses to get their boobs out. This feels like voyeurism for the benefit of someone on the production.
The final thing that really bugged me was the mumbled dialogue. Characters talk fast and with the weird phrases they spout out it was so hard to hear what they were saying. I had to put subtitles on, something I have never had to do before in any film.
Overall, this is a big disappointment because it had such great potential.