A movie with no ending.

Rating: 5/10 (21 January 2017)

This movie starts out great. Aliens arrive, and we have to talk with them. You really feel drawn into the struggle to reach an understanding, ala "Contact".
But there are some glaring places where suspension of disbelief falls apart.
Other countries start to somehow "feel threatened" and given an ultimatum to the aliens before they start shooting. But there is no good reason given for why other countries would feel this way. There is some mention in the translation of "weapon", but the aliens have done nothing aggressive that we are shown. So it is hard to believe that suddenly anyone would be keen on blowing the aliens out of the sky when they have done nothing aggressive and no one can understand them yet.
It's also hard to believe that such an incredibly advanced civilization would have difficulty communicating with humans. It should have been incredibly easy to settle upon agreed symbols for YES and NO within the first couple of days. These are pretty, dare I say, "universal" concepts. So once you have yes and no down, getting to some basic intentions of the aliens, like showing them an animated cartoon of one of the alien ships blowing away Earth ala The Death Star should have been pretty easy to get a yes or no answer to from the aliens.
But, we can overlook these things as "just the way they are in this movie".
But then just past the half way point we finally get the idea that the understanding the language alters your perception of time. It dawns on the viewer that Louise's flashbacks are actually flash-forwards.
But then...nothing is done with that fodder, other than a reveal that Louise uses her future knowledge to get information from the Chinese general to stop their attack in the present.
But it's not made clear what would have compelled the General to give her the information in the future in the first place. He just whips out his cell phone and gives her his private number but says he doesn't know why.
Huh? And then the entire purpose of a sci-fi movie - some kind of resolution between the humans and the aliens - is waved away. We are given this snippet that the aliens will need human help 3000 years from now, and then they leave.
Huh? That's it? We don't learn any awesome insightful stuff from the aliens? We just get a time language? It was a huge letdown.
I was expecting some scene like the father-daughter scene from Contact where we are given some kind of vision of the future, that there are lots of species out there and this has gone on for billions of years, etc. etc.
Arrival gives you none of that.
I think the move really set out to be an anti-nationalist global Kumbaya with global military leaders being mindless thugs ready to blast the aliens for no good reason. That's about all it really does well.