Finally got around to seeing a couple of US films that'd been floating around.
And good grief - both pretty much sucked.
'Breach' - was a plodding and totally predictable spy thriller. The script was written by a machine on automatic, with comprehension set to 'make sure a bright 13 year old can follow this'.
Whoever the script writer was - they clearly know very little about either how to convey the multi-layered mindset of the intelligence community in an interesting way, or how to make stories that appeal to adults. And I doubt they've read Le Carre.
The political layers that could have fleshed the script out, are completely missing - the 'writer' clearly made some assumptions about the mindset of the end-viewer, that they would be in total agreement with who the bad guys and good guys are. No complexity at all. Except for a fairly ludicrous wallowing in Catholicism as a 'wiggle out of this plot problem' story device at various points. Immature storytelling at its worst, in my view.
'Fracture' - was a TV episode of something, slightly stretched to fit feature length, also operating on the same principle.
A fairly so-so story that could be told in a tight 25 minutes, stretched to feature length and padded with non-essential scenes comprising of nothing except repetition of already made points.
I kept waiting for the reveal of the 'one so-called mystery trick' the script writer managed to create in his story - and when it finally came, it didn't justify waiting through a feature length movie to discover. Insipid writing and basically a banal stretch of a television detective story plot device.
Hopkins looks almost embaressed at being part of such a flimsy waste of screen time, you can see he winced at it, then took the money, learned his lines over a weekend, and hoped it would go away quickly.
I love how bad these films are on every level except the technical, as they
stand as wonderful examples of how likely it is that ultimately, many of the good scripts and writers on this forum, will probably succeed.
And good grief - both pretty much sucked.
'Breach' - was a plodding and totally predictable spy thriller. The script was written by a machine on automatic, with comprehension set to 'make sure a bright 13 year old can follow this'.
Whoever the script writer was - they clearly know very little about either how to convey the multi-layered mindset of the intelligence community in an interesting way, or how to make stories that appeal to adults. And I doubt they've read Le Carre.
The political layers that could have fleshed the script out, are completely missing - the 'writer' clearly made some assumptions about the mindset of the end-viewer, that they would be in total agreement with who the bad guys and good guys are. No complexity at all. Except for a fairly ludicrous wallowing in Catholicism as a 'wiggle out of this plot problem' story device at various points. Immature storytelling at its worst, in my view.
'Fracture' - was a TV episode of something, slightly stretched to fit feature length, also operating on the same principle.
A fairly so-so story that could be told in a tight 25 minutes, stretched to feature length and padded with non-essential scenes comprising of nothing except repetition of already made points.
I kept waiting for the reveal of the 'one so-called mystery trick' the script writer managed to create in his story - and when it finally came, it didn't justify waiting through a feature length movie to discover. Insipid writing and basically a banal stretch of a television detective story plot device.
Hopkins looks almost embaressed at being part of such a flimsy waste of screen time, you can see he winced at it, then took the money, learned his lines over a weekend, and hoped it would go away quickly.
I love how bad these films are on every level except the technical, as they
stand as wonderful examples of how likely it is that ultimately, many of the good scripts and writers on this forum, will probably succeed.
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