Saving Scientist Ryan

Rating: 4/10 (24 November 2013)

One of the biggest-grossing films of the year and one of RYM's highest-ranking movies (number 60 all-time, as I write) and it's only just come out. No shortage of expectation on my part then as I donned the 3D glasses and sat in for show-time.
Well, I was disappointed. I can see it's a technical wonder with its depiction of life in space, both inside and outside a space- station, but frankly the lack of drama, never mind action very much bored me in my seat. It's very hard to convey character garbed in a space-suit, whirling around the cosmos, you can barely see the actors faces for the first hour or so. I found nothing greatly original in the very thin story-line either and some of the quirky character traits either overly sentimental (Bullock's loss of her young daughter) or just plain irritating (Clooney's country and western music predilection).
I appreciate the difficulty of one solitary character carrying a film, but "The Spirit Of St Louis" and "The Old Man And The Sea" in their depictions of human-kind's battles against earlier frontiers managed it and while I liked that it was a woman rather than a man who carried the film, Sandra Bullock is no James Stewart or Spencer Tracy. I'm no expert in these things, but her ability to successfully navigate her weightless way around the spacecrafts of two foreign countries and just by picking up conveniently situated manuals, actually fly the things and engineer her escape to miraculously land on water, yards from shore, all beggared belief.
Watching this film was like sitting in a theme-park simulator, okay for 10 but certainly not for 90 whole minutes.