Left With Still So Much Potential After False Advertisement

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2020)

This movie's main selling point was that it was made to look as if the whole movie was filmed in one take. The main problem I have with this movie, though, is that Mendes abandons that idea halfway through the movie. He attempts to justify this single noticeable cut in the movie by having the main character come back from being knocked unconscious. This cut could have been avoided in numerous ways, though. He could have held a static shot on the unconscious body of the main character and shown time going by through the sun going down, since he was knocked unconscious while the sun is still up and wakes up at nighttime. Or Mendes could have the same dynamic shot that goes to black but then go back to the same shot when the character wakes up. Those are just two possibilities but there are plenty of creative ways to avoid cutting in the middle of a movie built around not cutting. This was a very annoying part of the movie and really affected how well this movie is as a whole since that was the main idea for the movie. Also, the cinematography left a lot to be desired, especially from somebody as amazing of a cinematographer as Roger Deakins, but there were some very good looking shots still since again it is Roger Deakins. For example, the scene at the end of the movie where the main character is running across the battlefield is easily the absolute best part of the movie. It looked great, the acting was great even though there was no dialogue but the main actor still displayed such determination and fear that it was still a very good performance. The acting in the movie was very good throughout, too, especially from Dean-Charles Chapman. He has a very expressive face that allows him to show many emotions without saying much. George MacKay, though, while he did do a good job for most of his scenes, his death scene did not feel very convincing. The writing in the movie, while not amazing, was still attention grabbing and the dialogue felt realistic enough. Given all of this, if I had to rate the movie, I would give it around a 6-7/10 leaning more towards a 7/10. That one scene I previously talked about alone is worth seeing this movie for. If they had not cut that one time in the middle of the movie I would have given it an 8/10.