There were some really great parts of this and some other choices that were kind of baffling. I think anything by Burroughs would prove difficult to adapt, and they really went for it all the way here which is cool.
In the end my feeling was that the elements didn’t fully incorporate with one another. For example, there were genuinely tender moments from Daniel Craig (genuine longing, embarrassment, etc.) interspersed with equally grotesque moments — a nice contrast; but then…
It’s all in the images here, writing was pretty weak, acting was pretty standard, but every single establishing shot of the falls, every frame-within-a-frame, that overhead shot in the bell tower, remarkable. Kind of reminded me of a couple Orson Welles movies, Lady from Shanghai and that other one with the bell tower scene as well.
Tragedy comes without warning.
Beasts of No Nation meets idk, something else probably.
Testament to the idea that you should put your characters in worst-case-scenario-situations and have them make worst-of-all-possible-options decisions and then see how they deal with it.
Also, real cool to see the origins of a lot of cohen brothers staples: the “following car” from Lebowski, the car on the highway pulling up at the most inopportune moment from Fargo, even a final showdown that patterns closely with one from No Country, and of course, all the misunderstandings!
