It was decent.
It's a solid biographical narrative about Diana Nyad with strong performances, beautiful camera work and direction from Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. The director's previous works were documentaries like "Free Solo, The Rescue, and Meru" which are both visually breathtaking documentaries. Chin and Vasarhelyi have provided some extremely beautiful documentaries in the past that I have quite enjoyed. With this being their first fictional feature, the direction provided was pretty good that helped maintain the movie's tone, themes, and narrative structure together.
The narrative is the typical inspirational sports structured and it is predictable since it does follow the typical Hollywood bio movie style. But the narrative still has some strong emotional moments within the characters and tone. Many of the swimming and underwater moments are well-executed and the camerawork and presentation is gorgeous to look at. Many of the performances are pretty good as Annette Bening and Jodie Foster were great and provided good chemistry between one another. Unfortunately, because I am not a big sports person, I wasn't fully able to connect with the movie as the characters weren't too impactful and I felt the movie's themes and message is too familiar as there had been many other movies that followed this theme. Since the directors are have more experience with documentaries, I also felt like the energy and style from the direction isn't as strong or the same as their other works. I personally think this story would have been more interesting if it was a documentary rather than a feature film.
Overall, it's a solid watch.
It's a solid biographical narrative about Diana Nyad with strong performances, beautiful camera work and direction from Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. The director's previous works were documentaries like "Free Solo, The Rescue, and Meru" which are both visually breathtaking documentaries. Chin and Vasarhelyi have provided some extremely beautiful documentaries in the past that I have quite enjoyed. With this being their first fictional feature, the direction provided was pretty good that helped maintain the movie's tone, themes, and narrative structure together.
The narrative is the typical inspirational sports structured and it is predictable since it does follow the typical Hollywood bio movie style. But the narrative still has some strong emotional moments within the characters and tone. Many of the swimming and underwater moments are well-executed and the camerawork and presentation is gorgeous to look at. Many of the performances are pretty good as Annette Bening and Jodie Foster were great and provided good chemistry between one another. Unfortunately, because I am not a big sports person, I wasn't fully able to connect with the movie as the characters weren't too impactful and I felt the movie's themes and message is too familiar as there had been many other movies that followed this theme. Since the directors are have more experience with documentaries, I also felt like the energy and style from the direction isn't as strong or the same as their other works. I personally think this story would have been more interesting if it was a documentary rather than a feature film.
Overall, it's a solid watch.