Kubrick and Barry cannot coexist

Rating: 6/10 (30 April 2019)

Stanley Kubrick is an indisputable master of his craft and so this is, of course, a brilliant piece of cinema but there's a crucial missing element. He tells the story of Redmond Barry, a brash, larger than life character. A character who commands an end quote about how we all end up the same. But in Kubrick's world, character is secondary to art and all are given to introspection and long, hard gazes.
And so it is that Kubrick tells the story of a fairly ordinary man with tremendous strokes of luck. His driving characteristic of seizing every opportunity that falls his way incongruously breaks down in a duel with his archenemy. Kubrick obviously painted himself into a corner there as he claimed to be showing how the aspects of Redmond's personality that lead him to the top were also behind his downfall.