Very good but falls short of being great

Rating: 7/10 (1 December 2016)

Arrival is a good film but not great. Watched it yesterday in the local movie hall and was immediately disappointed by how drab it looked, where did all the great cinematography and camera-work of the Director's previous work Sicario had gone? Rechecked the trailers and there was definitely problem with the print given to PVR, which is such a shame because this movie looked excellent in trailers and so bad in the movie hall. As far as acting is concerned everyone was decent and I think this is the first time Amy Adams has been the first lead of a movie and she brought her A game, easily career best performance. I thought the first half was quite weak, there are a lot of "talky" generic scenes which could have been cut, the extra effort to show the military protocol of isolation, immune system boosts, suits, etc. etc. got way more screen time than it deserved, Denis Villeneuve should have trusted his audience, we understand all the protocols, don't spend half an hour to forty five minutes explaining it to us with chitter-chatter and therein lies the biggest fault of Arrival, there are just so many scenes that a person who watches these kinds of films doesn't need, some aspects just feel a bit dumbed down. There is also one convenient, really bad story angle which just adds fifteen minutes to the runtime but was completely unnecessary. If I was the editor, this movie would have lost good half an hour if not more. BUT and this is a big BUT, the second half picks up momentum and where all the seeds the film planted start to take shape, and this is quite well done, I was impressed, the climax was truly the highlight of the film and so well done but can't be discussed without going into spoilers. The music and score is good but not as good as Sicario, and often feels forced and overused (especially in an otherwise excellent climax). All in all, despite it's rough edges, I still liked Arrival, I liked it more than the usual science fiction releases around this time of the year- Gravity, Interstellar, Martian, but this is not that great first contact film that we will be talking about for years like 2001 or Soalris, just a solid film for this year.