Reviews

This was a lame attempt at a trippy dark thriller with a uninspired premise that never takes off. It's one of those movies you struggle to care about and find hard to take seriously. Plot centers around two paramedics who keep finding overdose victims taking the same DMT-derivative pill, leading one of them to eventually "test" them on himself, which magically transport him into different pasts based on which square inch of his room he is standing on. Yes- this is a movie about pills that physically transport people into the past. Gimmicky? Sure. But in theory this could have been made into a heady, smart sci-fi movie if the script/world building were good enough.

Much of the dialogue was empty and boring; the first half of the plot is a melodrama with unnatural sounding and forced conversation. The main paramedic weaves in and out of a series of rescues in which the directors don't even try have him do proper protocol (they make a bunch of dumb, obvious errors in judgement no real EMT would do). Then we see glimpses of his poorly directed personal life in which he has boring conversations with depressed drug addicts, drinks beer to pass the time, and fights with his best friend and wife who weirdly appear in and out of the movie like afterthoughts.

It attempts establish dramatic and deep scenes but they come across like cardboard.

There's even randomly inserted dumb 2020-woke dialogue that had nothing to do with the scenes or what these characters would say to each other in real life ("Dude you can't drive the ambulance down that district, a black guy driving around there? Would be more dangerous than half our calls!")

The second half of the plot is the paramedic "testing" the drug by doing it a bunch of times and getting thrown in catoonish-time periods where rednecks and ghosts and wild animals instantly attack him. Then the only decent part happens- he goes on a somewhat ingesting journey to find and and rescue a friend who got stuck in a past timeline.

In general if I had to praise it for something, the directors seemed to have some cool moments fleshed out in their head (the space sequences, the great editing transitions) but these were not enough to make up for a empty story and repetitive formulaic bleak characters with dialogue that sounds like it's fresh off the Amazon TV factory for another random genre show.

Next to Blade Runner, this is the best cyberpunk movie ever made and possibly THE best scripted discussion on futurist ethics and technology I've seen. There's a reason Spielberg said it was one of the most imaginative speculative fiction worlds he's ever seen on screen.

The first 15 minutes are hard as heck to follow, but stick with it. The story throws you in with a bunch of sci-fi concepts and terms unique to its universe, but you'll learn them quickly (like a Gibson novel).

The film has very unique expository dialogue: many times the characters explain concepts to each other that they should already be familiar with, but you realize quickly it's really just unique 4th wall breaking style to help the audience understand and dive into the universe more easily.

Feels infinitely rewatchable due to complex plot, themes, and stunning drawings. You can set your home speakers to something ambient and just sit back and chill and watch scenes of the city and be mesmerizing by the art direction and care taken on each frame. Love how there was a 7 minute sequence in the middle devoted to just this. Great directing that soaks us into the universe and acts a well deserved plot break from all the complexity.

Perfect finale conversation... when the singularity comes we will undoubtly react like the police woman, who clings intuitively to wanting to keep her 'self', but as eastern tradition has known for centuries, and as the omniscient AI understands here, we don't have one to give up in the first place. Made me really interested in the concept of singularity with AI: might it actually be good?

Standout Pros -Really interesting plot about a secret death squad in the police department that massacres criminal gangs in SF. I just wish they didn't indiscriminately kill innocent bystanders too, it takes away from any realism or philosophical gray areas for us to think about (the corrupt cops meet Harry and lay out their motives but we're not even remotely Interested in their speech because they kill just as many innocent people.) -Best gunshot deaths in any movie, period. Bodies spasm, nerves twitch, and the victims squeeze out labored breaths and noises before falling silent. The camera holds on most of these shots too for just the right amount of time to sell the impact of a gunfights aftermath.

Cons -Poorly directed, especially compared to Dirty Harry which imo was one of the best directed thrillers I've ever seen. Tod Post makes this seem like a long tv episode, with pointless supporting character development scenes that had nothing to do with the main plot and took away from the tension and pacing. -Harry's personality is not allowed to shine nearly as much in Magnum compared to the original.... Eastwood isn't given much room to play around with in this as a limiting script seems to forget Harry is the main character and devotes most of his on screen time to looking sour faced and doing silently doing detective work. -Badly shot ending scene that wasn't nearly as tense as it should have been, and a terribly unbelievable death with the final officer who falls simply 20 feet off a roof into a deep water bay, yet he somehow floats dead when Harry looks back at him.

There are a few gems that stood out to me in this movie -Cruise's acting, of course. Great portrayal of a sociopath bastardizing philosophy and existentialism to justify killing and the cheapness of individual lives. -The brutal realism of the ally-way shootout scene -The coyote street crossing moment for it's insanely moving direction by Mann -A couple of Cruise/Fox's conversations about work and life

• The pacing/momentum of the middle act

It's too bad though that this is one of the most unbelievable, annoying, and downright weird plots I've seen in a thriller. A professional hitman woudl roll his eyes at nearly everything Cruise does in this movie besides his cool professionalism in terms of personality.

Usually you have to suspend your belief a bit in movies, but the amount of times your expected to do so in what is supposedly a bleak/realist thriller is insulting. Plot holes aside, the ending act (last thirty minutes) becomes very boring as the story veers off into a incredibly unbeleivable good-guy gets bad guy moment and saves the girl. Horribly paced, made no sense, and took us out of what made the movie great at moments (the tension in the cab, the sense of Fox being trapped and helpless, etc)

7/10- Good, but flawed.

Contrary to what other reviewers are saying, this is not a film about the rot of Aussie hillbillies or their "disgusting" lifestyle. The film is careful not to show Grant as a victim of outside forces; rather, he is a victim of his own sense of superiority, for he revels in these exploits as much as he despises them.

Grants smiles and having the time of his life in nearly every "dark" scene like the ro' massacre and "rape" scene with the doctor. Ted Kotcheff says it himself in an interview with Sense of Cinema... "I think that's the whole theme of the picture: a man who discovers he is basically in the same existential boat as everyone else, and that discovery liberates and humanises him."

Re-watch the thing and this all becomes apparent and shot in a masterly fashion.

'Das Boot' (Wolfgang Peterson's first ocean based drama) is my favorite movie of all time and a towering classic of cinema regarding its 10/10 pacing, tension, atmosphere, grit, and cinematography.

That being said, I expected another ocean-drama movie coming from Peterson to be at least an 8/10 (Great). What we got instead was a painfully average movie-- awesome in select scenes but mostly boring and packed with ineffective creative decisions.

This movie is a case study for how "average" a movie can become even with a killer cast and crew. Usually this happens because of business-minded producers butting in and changing everything. In this case I'm not sure if that's what happened or if Peterson simply let his chops down on this one.

First off, the score really bogs this thing down. It's incredibly over the top. It sticks out like crazy for a movie about average-guy fishermen caught in a storm. I think the movie would have been a lot more tense/gritty/real if they replaced it with low-volume risers and eerie fill. Instead, they pack nearly every scene with the same two tracks that make it sound like these men are 18th century explorers racing back to Spain to deliver water from the fountain of youth. It's simply too epic/orchestral/deep for what it needs to be and Peterson never mixes it up with new sound, just these two main scores over and over again.

Second, the overall direction/focus of the plot seemed incoherent. The entire first half of the movie was about the men's love lives back in MA (and too much of it was unrealistic overly poetic and lovey-dovey soap opera dialogue if you ask me). Then the second half details the men's fishing expedition, but cuts many times to a sub-plot of a coast guard crew loosing their helicopter at sea (funny enough this is the most gripping part of the movie). Only the final 20ish minutes display the actual disaster the movie was supposed to be about. Breaking up plot-lines isn't always a bad idea, but it just falls flat in The Perfect Storm... the intense love-filled first half was cheesy and ultimately poorly integrated into the second half. Nothing wrong with romance obviously, but in a disaster movie it should be the secondary or derivative focus that makes you more invested in the characters. Here it tries to be the main plot only to remember that it is actually a disaster men-at-sea movie 60 minutes later.

Third, the acting/relationship between the crewmen. Virtually all of the time they barely interacted other than to boringly discuss their love interests back home or experiences sailing. And the fight between the two crewmen is particularly lame and drawn out and just poorly written.