Not a lot wrong with this film, very tense watch

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2016)

"Arrival" is an American English-language movie from this year (2016) and the newest production from rising Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. The writer is Eric Heisserer and he has been mostly known so far for the new version of "The Thing". Here he adapted once again the work for somebody else, namely Ted Chiang, who is responsible for "Story of Your Life", the original literary work this film is based on. The movie we have here runs for almost two hours and features Amy Adams as one of the world's most renowned translators. Next to her, we see Jeremy Renner as a successful scientist and Oscar winner Forest Whitaker as a military commander. But sadly, the latter two are not given the material to work with in terms of the acting level they possess. It is really all about Adams' character and the story of course, the rest are just side aspects. We also find out a lot about her, in terms of her job, her personal life, her past etc. right the way you would expect it for a central character. Then, relatively quickly, the story progresses and we find out about the alien invasion and how Adams' character gets called to duty and has to help the government in finding out what the aliens want exactly, if they are on a peaceful mission or on a not-so-peaceful one.
As a whole, I really enjoyed the watch here. One thing I did not like early on was the reference about the main character's daughter as it felt randomly thrown in as a somewhat tragic side story, but as we find out at the very end, it is much more than that and I can forgive the makers for including these scenes early on. Actually the ending almost made me appreciate these scenes. What I did not appreciate, however, was also almost at the very end, namely the scene of how she manages to have an impact on the radical Chinese military leader's decision and I really did not like this plot development. Her character was significant enough already, so no need to let her solve what can easily be considered a global military crisis, especially as they said on several occasions that other countries would follow his example. But not so Adams' character. She does the right thing. Honestly, this all sounds a bit pseudo-dramatic to me and over the top. This also refers to Michael Stuhlbarg's character in my opinion. I think he is a really gifted actor, but the role of the unlikable colleague is so underwhelmingly written here and the moment he points his gun at her is really as disappointing and stereotypical as it gets. I wish they could have sorted this stuff out. But like I said earlier, the good still easily outweighs the bad. And I will elaborate on this a bit in the next paragraph.
I think the general idea is pretty brilliant. Several spaceships come to planet Earth and we (the earthlings) have no idea what they want or if they have good or bad intentions. The scenes in front of the glass are also really amazing, even if I struggled a bit with the scientists being able to communicate so effortlessly quickly. Anyway, it's a science fiction film after all and I can deal with the less realistic stuff. Visually this was a feast and audibly the film delivered too. And it was also pretty atmospheric, which is really crucial with the subject. The atmosphere is the one aspect that carries the film and I was genuinely curious about what would happen next, not just to Adams' character, but to mankind as a whole. So yeah, with this performance Adams catapults herself into the elite of Hollywood actresses under 45 (if she hadn't been there already anyway). The script is very strong too and these minor struggles at times aren't bad enough to destroy the film as a whole, only to keep it from being a great film and one of the year's very best. It still is a strong achievement and I applaud everybody involved. You really wanna see it, especially if you love alien-themed movies. It's not as good as my favorite from the genre, "District 9", but honestly, it comes pretty close at times. Now stop reading these words and experience "Arrival" yourself. You won't be disappointed.