An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by David O. Russell, I was really eager to check it out. I have noticed that this movie didn’t get much love when it was released and, well, to be honest, I would have to agree with the critics on this one. I mean, it’s not that it was bad, it was probably Russell’s most ambitious project so far, the whole thing was visually pretty neat and there was an impressive cast involved. I guess the main issue was with the writing. Indeed, the beginning scenes were definitely promising but it seems that Russel kept indulging himself with some narrative digressions which constantly dragged down the whole thing. Sure, I get that it was convoluted on purpose but I’m afraid this approach did backfire after all. I mean, you had many WWI veterans struggling to fit in the US society, several romances, a couple of murders and a fascist plot to overthrow the US government. And I shouldn’t forget that, in the middle of all this, the trio of main characters did get indeed to Amsterdam at some point but, in my opinion, it had not enough impact on the story and I think it could have been actually easily removed. Anyway, it was a lot to digest, some of it was fairly interesting but, to be honest, none of it was really dazzling, I’m afraid. In fact, even the star-studded cast started to bother me at some point. Indeed, instead of focusing on the main characters, every 5 minutes, you had a famous actor showing up to play a very minor character for maybe 5 mins and then disappear completely which was just so distracting. As a result, it is rather tricky to judge the acting since everyone involved was given too little to do, except maybe Christian Bale who had fun with his character but he also had slightly more running time than everyone else. Anyway, to conclude, even if the damned thing never really worked, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in David O. Russell’s work.