Had me sitting on the edge of my seat - but only to escape.

Rating: 3/10 (18 November 2017)

I haven't written a review of this kind before but was so disappointed by the discrepancy between the high IMDb rating for this film and what I saw that I felt I must do so. The film starts in such dreary, muted colours that I had to pause it and set the screen brightness to vivid to even see some of the opening scenes. This type of mood setting seems to be popular now but boy does it make for a depressing Friday night viewing. Along with the visual settings I found I could not follow some of the dialogue as background music often drowned the actors voices out or in some cases the actors words were unintelligible. The pace is sluggish and the discoveries made by the lead roles were not evident to the rest of the cast or to many of the viewers I suspect. It is a voyage of discovery, but one where the viewer is kept in the dark even when the discoveries are made. A little bit of stereotyping is present has the usual military "thickos" doing all the bad stuff, more through incompetence than malevolence; so very passé nowadays when most senior military personnel have high academic attainments. If you read "War and Peace" but the author had left out the "War" part or "Pride and Prejudice" similarly edited you will have some idea of how this film progresses. There is a twist at the end but its impact is lost in the ennui that I felt. I couldn't wait to get to the end and head off to bed. If I had a TV in the bedroom it would certainly have got me to sleep much earlier.