Reviews

Neither De Niro, nor Pacino can save you, when you don't have a REAL story to tell. Actually, the film is well made, as you can expect from Scorsese, but it's more like a chronicle than a real movie. You are put inside many characters and small plots, but in the end suddenly in a blink of an eye the irishman got old and retired. It's the same with all the other guys - they are murdered or jailed. The title of the movie predicts its feebleness, because the fact that De Niro is an irishman is mentioned somehow, but it's not the most important thing about the his character and the plot itself. It's not even of medium importance. The film could easily be entitled 'Frank Sheeran", but wouldn't be that intriguing.

Having seen previous A.G.Iñárritu's movies like Biutiful and Birdmen, I started this one with very low expectations and mainly because Di Caprio's genius would overcome Iñárritu's feebleness. I was surprised to see that this time there is a story and actors are not encouraged to overact. Frankly, the movie could be even called entertaining. And that's where good points finish. The bad sides are typical for this director. He sees things like red blood spilled over white snow as a highest form of art and tries to persuade the audience with unnecessary emphasis on guts and gore. Bud sadly, once again it's not convincing. The worst thing about this movie is that it's completely meaningless. Why a story like that should be told and seen - it remains a secret between Iñárritu and his devoted fans. One of the reasons is maybe to make people understand that if you are in the cold wilderness your best option is to take every chance to enter waters in order to recover and have you wounds healed. That's what Di Caprio's character did - he was almost gone but after swimming few times in the icy water and sleeping with his wet clothes on the snow instead of dying of hypothermia he got better and even quit creeping and felt good enough to walk. But it doesn't matter after all. Red blood over white snow is all that is meaningful.

A story with great potential, ruined by awful directing - that's what this movie is. There is a complete lack of deepness in building characters, relations and even the maturing of the idea of walking a high wire and organizing the coup was pith-less and unconvincing. Not to mention the overacting by J.G.Levitt through the whole movie that results in perceiving the protagonist as a dull, arrogant and unpleasant character.In the same time, there is not enough action to compensate the viewer for the hollow script and make the watching entertaining. With a proper direction and without the comedy style representation of the story this could be much more worthy.

In the beginning I thought it would be the next marvelous film made by Latin Americans and the title seemed kind of interesting to me, although I know the saying "Nothing good is for no charge". And I should listen to it because with such a funny, idiotic-looking and bad-singing squealer, all the time I kept my fingers crossed for the Devil. At least, he could sing! It's not a movie for the wide audience, it's a kind of a Venezuelian native folklore and you can feel it only if you're a Venezuelian. I went to watch it at the theater only because it was free of charge. But in the end of the movie I realized the price - my time.