An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but, since it was directed by Ridley Scott, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, it will probably go down as one of his biggest flops and, to be honest, I didn’t think it deserved a better fate. I do have a weak spot for such post-apocalyptic futuristic tale, which was probably another reason why I was curious about this movie, but it seemed that Scott turned out to be a rather poor choice to direct it. The issue with this story was that it did feel rather generic and the way it was handled by the veteran director made it so flat. Seriously, it was like there was no pulse whatsoever throughout the whole duration. I think he would have been better suited to direct something more like ‘World War Z’ with some big action pieces. Here, there were a couple of action scenes which were obviously well made but it was obviously not the point of this movie. The focus should have been the characters and what they had become in this wasted land but it was something way too subtle for a visual technician like Scott (his only movie where he managed to do something like this was ‘Thelma & Louise’ and I’m actually not a fan of this movie). There were basically only 4 characters and, except for Hig, they were totally half-baked. Indeed, the only positive thing here was Jacob Elordi who was not only quite charismatic but he also managed to bring a lot of depth in his character. He did feel really stunted emotionally and I did appreciate that he took his time to finally start having a relationship with Cima (in fact, I would have dropped the final scene and let the characters start their relationship on their own terms, not because Scott needed to wrap his movie). Concerning the other 3, well, I’m afraid it wasn’t really great. Margaret Qualley had a rather thankless task here playing the love interest and it didn’t help that her character fell in love with Hig within 5 mins but she was simply not given anything else to do. Sure, Josh Brolin was fun and had the best one-liners but that’s basically all he was reduced to be, some funny sidekick who happened to be a lethal killing machine. Out of these 4 characters, the most bewildering and useless one was played by Guy Pearce. Basically, he was added to the mix only to make sure that Cima wouldn't be alone (because, of course, there is now a way a pretty woman like her could survive such an apocalypse without a man) but his character was just too similar to Brolin’s character (hell, they even looked very similar). It was interesting that, from the moment that Bangley came back in the story, Pops had no dialogue anymore and he almost completely vanished from the movie. Anyway, to conclude, even if it wasn’t completely awful, it might be the most forgettable movie ever delivered by Ridley Scott.

6/10