Reviews

This review is not about the film but the crude American taste.

Whenever my cinema-savvy friends criticised Hollywood, I'd jokingly dismiss their arguments, saying I enjoy action-packed, fun films for afternoons and that Hollywood has great production. I stand corrected.

This film has been given a 5 by metacritic. Check out the reviews. They say silent moments are awkward.. or that stares are long... I had an epiphany that Americans and their layman critics have actually no appreciation for an actual good work when they see one. Everybody likes a big Mac but in no way it means you can slam a 5-michelin star cuisine.

I always acknowledged Hollywood films try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It makes them fun to a point. But I realised today it's not just their audience that is unnaturally confused with junk, but apparently American select critics are actually the lowest common denominator.

P.S. IMDb will not be a universal source until it goes beyond Hollywood standards.

While Darknight or Constantine proved otherwise, this title shows throwing in a number of stars like Crowe, etc wouldn't make a superhero film complex enough for adults. This one's for kids. The cast are good but some performances are just nuts; the scientist lady in her first encounter with an alien spaceship and live machinery for the, apparently, first time in human history shows anything other than awe. The underlying emotions are told in cuts and pieces and you can't relate to them. And a number of other, well, flaws, or simplicities make this film only suitable for a lazy afternoon when you don't have anything better to do.

You would expect to get bored and leave if you knew there's one character and no dialogue in a film. I had my doubts. But it just didn't happen. Not for a second the entire duration. Because it's a beautifully crafted picture of the fight we all have. It's like an excursion, an introversive one. To see in a mirror the ultimate aloneness that is in each of us. And ocean is the perfect setting; it resembles the way we live; surrounded but alone. And should we stop fighting, we die.

Robert Redford is just brilliant and I don't think I can ever stop respecting his choices for the roles he takes.