A Slog to Get Through and Not Worth a Second Viewing

Rating: 6/10 (22 October 2018)

First Man is a challenge to watch. Most action scenes take a claustrophobic and nausea inducing style that never relents. Interspersed with long quiet stares. Ryan Gosling plays a character similar to Drive and The Notebrook where he stares each other character into discomfort. It portrays missions accurately but then also adds in cinematic cliches like Neil seeing his dead daughter in places, which would've never happened. And the scene where he dropped his kids bracelet into the sea of tranquillity is pure Hollywood. A real juxtaposition with what the rest of the film is trying to achieve. It's a rather dull slog to the inevitable payoff which was all too brief. Without musical scenes, the Director is out of his depth in maintaining viewer attention for a biopic. It's a film to watch once just to say you be watched it but it won't stand the test of time.