This will not be easy

Rating: 8/10 (13 December 2016)

The always agreeable Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are two scientists tasked with communicating with the inhabitants of mysterious ships that suddenly appeared over the earth. No shoot-em-ups or explosions (except one). The aliens are seriously alien looking and have a symbolic written language which Adams slowly deciphers. The film mostly deals with the painfully slow process of sorting the alien language out. Meanwhile the rest of the earth freaks out. The U.S. is blessed with the usual crop of conspiracy bloggers, while Russia and China start to get itchy trigger fingers. The way Adams defuses the global crisis involves a mind-warping temporal loop, and would make a great and emotionally satisfying ending. Unfortunately, there's a sappy coda tacked on that contributes nothing and seriously detracts from the emotional impact of the film. We step back from the brink of interstellar war, humanity's better impulses win by a razor thin margin, the aliens leave in peace, leaving their language, which may hold the key to radically new concepts, and instead of ending on a hopeful and triumphant note, the film makers resort to an ending with the emotional impact of a damp sponge.