Pretty average

Rating: 5/10 (17 February 2017)

I was disappointed with the film. I'd hoped for something more like Contact rather than ID4 and was prepared to be captivated by something less crash bang wallop but unfortunately the film was just a little too slow and a little too tedious.
I liked the set up of the aliens showing up, the gravity in the ship and the complications with the language but the need for some of the countries to attack felt rushed and more as a device to generate some drama rather than being considered.
This was none more demonstrated that the soldiers going rogue. I think in the situation shown in the film, the quality of all personnel on the project would be the best that we could offer. The idea that you'd have a bunch of grunts easily seduced by some webcast to effectively mutiny against their own felt way, way off base. Furthermore the lack of repercussion given to the action rather than a cursory 'some guys went mad' line was just odd.
Really, some soldiers decided to plant their own device and endanger our interactions with an alien species and it was just pied off with a line of dialogue, just felt lazy and treated the audience with utter contempt. It really felt like 'oh we need some drama and a ticking clock device. It doesn't make much sense but just put it in anyway'.
People simply dismissing it as 'people are crazy' is not a good excuse in my mind. That means a director could introduce a random character in any film to carry out a random action and then have it validated by people saying 'oh people are stupid, didn't you know'.
For all the praise that the film is getting, it really was just very average in my opinion.