Great acting saved at least half of this movie. There was also some stunning cinematography— troops mobilizing, parachutes dropping, bridges being built all felt aesthetically pleasing and artistically meaningful.
I felt guilty for rating it 3 stars before I saw that Apocalypse Now was released less than two years later. It’s got some beautiful wide shots and great tragic actors, but it’s also the wrong combination of long and dumb.
Very uneven—the dialogue alternates between iconic and hammy, the acting is mostly uninspired with a few standout performances (Sting), the set design for the Emperor’s palaces is beautiful but everything else looks like it was filmed on a soundstage.
Overall, it’s completely bogged down in psychedelic and esoteric flim-flam at the expense of any coherent theme about politics or the power of belief. At its best its peak 80s cool. At its worst, it’s bizarre and unsettling with as many “plans within plans” as a Scooby-Doo feature film.
An absolute bop. Every single shot that wasn’t a close-up I wanted to pause and stare at like the Mona Lisa.
Special shout outs to:
-Christopher Walken and Florence Pugh absolutely rocking the same haircut
-Rebecca Ferguson as an extremely unsettling RMILF
-Dave Bautista as the most psychopathic villain I could imagine for the first half of this movie
-Austin Butler channeling Mark Zuckerberg to somehow become the most iconic portrayal of Feyd-Rautha
