Certainly it's okay, but hardly one of the best films of 2012

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2012)

Kind of a big disappointment for me, though it's certainly a pretty good movie. Affleck's direction is excellent, it's beautifully shot and it feels like a really good film, but, honestly, I think the story is kind of thin and never very interesting. You can tell that the screenwriter had to add dozens of moments of fake tension to the real story to make it filmable. None of the characters really pop out as interesting people, and it'd be a shame if someone like Alan Arkin was nominated for an Oscar just for getting a couple of chuckles. Affleck himself probably gives the best performance in the film, but it's of a blank kind of person, a CIA spy who is meant to be that way. The movie's perfectly entertaining to watch, but it evaporates immediately. It'll certainly be the kind of movie the Oscars go for, but, I'm calling it right now, no way it wins Best Picture (it might very well, however, win the Best Adapted Screenplay award, though it's totally undeserving of even that).