Sadly overrated, with a story that's full of holes *major spoilers*

Rating: 6/10 (2 February 2020)

I became a fan of Denis Villeneuve after watching Enemy and especially Prisoners, and I liked Sicario. But with Arrival I am having serious second thoughts. Arrival is a movie that appears very profound and meaningful at first glance but completely falls flat if you stop and really think about it. It is a very stylish movie that does not depend on effects or spectacle to create emotional impact, I'll give it that. It also explores an interesting premise, that of a peaceful "arrival" by aliens that are so utterly unlike us. It also has that tense and unnerving atmosphere that Villeneuve does really well, even complete with a little scene reminiscent of Enemy's giant spider scene.
Despite all that positivity, Arrival has to deserve this low score because its story's is riddled with huge flaws. It's full of holes, wholly implausible, and the movie has a clear problem with failure to communicate events, cause and effect and motivations.
First of all, this movie has a "scale" and "detachment" problem that makes everything difficult to believe. We are told to believe that the events unfolding at the Montana alien site are the most important thing that has ever happened in human history, but there is not much to show for it. The whole military operation is maintained by a few hundred soldiers, commanded by a colonel, and there is one linguistic expert on site (Louise). The whole thing seems to exist in a vacuum. There is no correspondence with the president or any other sort of higher-ups that we can see. We see everything else that goes on in the world through TV and computer screens. There are eleven other similar alien arrival sites across the world, and the other countries are apparently attempting to communicate with them much like our own heroes, but we don't learn much of anything about this process, until contact gets cut off. We learn that order starts to break down in different countries, but as seen on TV this has little impact and little explanation as to why it's happening.
The deciphering of the alien language makes up the crux of the story., and this process has a "hard science" feel to it. Except the movie completely fails to show exactly how this happens. There are literally NO concrete details as to how the initial (and most important) breakthrough is made. The scientists have a difficult and frustrating first few sessions, and then we are simply told in a montage that Louise has managed to teach the aliens the word for "human" and has started to make progress. This is a huge failure of the "show don't tell" principle, because we are in no way shown how this has happened. HOW did it happen? Later we are told that apparently at least two other countries - China and Russia - have managed to communicated with their aliens, China apparently with the help of a board game, but there are no real details on any of this.
Later on, the aliens present what is apparently their whole language, and this is their "gift" to humanity, because - as beings that can perceive all of time at once - they have deduced that 3000 years later they will need humanity's help. Putting aside the implausability of entities that can perceive the past and the future at the same time existing as anything other than godlike beings, there are several problems with this. What exactly is their gift? Louise, after being taken aboard the spaceship, gains the ability to see into the future and this is how she deciphers the entirety of the language. She says that mastering the language enables one to gain the ability to see all time as one, but if this is true, many people would gain this ability after the publication of Louise's book in the future, but there is no indication of this having happened. How does this gift work? And why does anyone think it CAN work? Louise herself gained the ability not through deciphering the language but apparently through "magical" means while contacting the aliens, because her "flashforwards" start much earlier, but there is no explanation as to why this happens only to her and not the rest of the science team.
In the movie's climax, as the various human militaries prepare to engage the aliens, the belligerent Chinese General Shang tells Louise in a flashforward scene how she convinced him to stand down by calling his private number and speaking to him his wife's dying words. Louise doesn't remember any of this, for some reason, so he shows her the number and tells her the words again. All of this is very much "deus ex machina" and makes zero sense when you stop to think about it. Louise not remembering the event seems to imply that is actually being "created" at that moment in the future in order to influence the past, and if so, it begs the question as to how the armies decided not to engage the aliens in the first place. It's classic time travel paradox. This is not even taking into consideration the implausability of all the nations suddenly deciding to come together just because some American scientist told a top Chinese general his wife's dying words in a phone call and then hung up.
In order to illustrate Arrival's failings to communicate its plot points clearly I am going to highlight a particular scene: The bombing carried out by the "rogue" soldiers. It makes no sense. A few soldiers, apparently brainwashed by some conspiracy theory radio show host, decide to "do something" about the aliens. Their plan is to plant a meager amount of explosives on the spaceship, an amount that cannot in any way destroy the ship. What are their motivitations? What is this going to accomplish? How come a group of apparently hand-picked and elite troops manage to get duped into doing this by listening to a random radio program? We don't know.
They plant the bombs, by coincidence at the same time as Louise and co decide to back up into the ship for another communication session, fail to stop the scientists, but then the aliens save them at the last minute, althougn one of them - "Abbott"- is fatally injured. Exactly why beings that can see into the future fail to stop this happening before the last minute is unclear - except maybe for dramatic effect. This is especially more confusing for the alien who dies. Did he foresee his own death in the bombing, but simply chose to go along with it? Why? And to top it off, after this incident nobody in the military camp is making a big deal out of this, barely mentioning it when Louise asks about it. Except it's the biggest thing that has happened until that point and could end up literally destroying the world.
(Sigh)
And finally, I do like the tense atmosphere, but I don't like it when the only single emotion that the main character conveys for 95% of the movie is: "tense"