Patchiness

Rating: 7/10 (13 October 2017)

It was never going to be able to live up to the original, how could it? However, judging by the fawning reviews in the media, you could have been forgiven for thinking it had managed to pull off the impossible. Unfortunately I think these days you just have to take the whole review industry with a massive pinch of salt. Is it a bad film? No, not at all. Is it a worthy successor to the original? Difficult question to answer. The pacing is painfully, painfully slow, and I don't have any problem with slow movies, my attention span is fine, but let's face it, the whole thing didn't get into gear for at least 60-70 minutes, there was so little dramatic tension there, I honestly thought about leaving, although I am glad I didn't, as the second half was an improvement. So it's a patchy film at best, moments of brilliance for sure, visually impressive, the script is uneven and often cheesy, the characters not as fully dimensional as the original, the plot is quite well worked out, although the ending was a letdown for me, too sugary sweet. However, there is for me, a huge emptiness in this movie, where the original seemed to have some kind of connection with the society, here it's like a wasteland, you don't get any sense of connection to the world - maybe that's the intention, but it's somehow a lot bleaker than the original. Personally I am not a massive fan of Gosling either, that's just me, I wasn't fully convinced by him. Overall - horrible pacing for the first half, interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying plot resolution, stunning visuals, good performances. It's good, but it's nowhere near as great as the media would have you believe. It's not an insult to the original at all, it's just not in the same league.