Great visuals but the story is punching above its weight

Rating: 6/10 (18 January 2017)

Arrival – NO SPOILERS I watched this last night and has taken me a while to makes sense of my thoughts on it. I have steered away from other reviews for fear of spoilers etc so this is a completely objective and personal review of which I'm sure will have a much divided backlash. OK, so lets start with the good : The film itself as a visual product is stunning, no doubt about it, when you have 2 hours set effectively set between a military camp and a huge floating pebble, the visual hook has got to be there, and it was! These visuals compliment the cast, well.Amy Adams perfectly! She really flexed her acting muscles here imo and proved herself an incredibly competent actress and thought she was brilliantly cast for the role and may be the best performance I've seen from her. Her character embodies so many emotions throughout the film and Adams really brings this to life, you believe what shes feeling...grief,excitement,confusion etc. I do however feel the rest of the 'known' actors were sort of thrown in just to rack up a celebrity endorsement. Unfortunately, aside from the great visuals and Amy Adams performance there really wasn't anything else holding this film together. I understood the messages the film was trying to get out there, but when the film finished I found myself not pondering the message the film tried to convey , but ratherwhat was the point in making such a visually impressive film wrapped around such a weak plot/screenplay. The music score I found very odd, in that I like music to dictate the pace of the film and emphasize the tone and emotion of scenes, but with Arrival, it was all just very low and dull which really didn't seem to do anything in terms of highlighting the mood of certain scenes and actually making 'breakthroughs' and pivotal moments seem to come out of leftfield with no sense of tension of build-up. The aliens – I just found them very underwhelming ,and not sure how these giant floating squid like things could build those ships., so assume they just have an unfathomable level of intelligence and technology.which then makes me question how they don't have a way/device of translating with humans? I admire the plot being its own thing and quite unique but imo it was punching way above its weight and as such left me frustrated with the plot holes and issues I had with the consistency of the unfolding story , but that would mean going into spoiler territory and I wont do that!I With that said, there's not really anything else to comment on To sum up, this film is what I would expect if Shyamalan was to tackle a 'Sci Fi' film, and I found It delivered far less than what the first 15mins or so promised. This was a 2 hour journey explaining in a very complicated way the reason behind the alien's arrival and also to show how humanity reacts to something that isn't understood. I will give this a 6/10 , and it's the cinematography and Amy Adams performance that's got it up there.