I expected more

Rating: 7/10 (8 March 2016)

Having seen Sicario, anything but whimsical, and some of the comments made about this film and the director in general, I expected something more than this convoluted, cack handed effort at emotional drama. Sure the cinematography was excellent, the acting exquisite, the Middle-Eastern landscape lovingly captured but the story was so preposterous that it undermined the real suffering which has occurred and continues to occur in the war-torn areas of the Middle East.
Right from the hackneyed letters device at the beginning of the film I started to worry, ooh person speaks from the grave, what is this "The Greatest Gift" all over again? To the inexplicable throwing-up of the lives of the children, really you're just going to drop everything including your burgeoning career and whatever else is going on for a wild goose chase on the behest of your emotionally distant and possibly unhinged mother? These decisions seemed incongruent if we were to assume that the children were sane, balanced individuals and we were certainly meant to perceive the daughter as such, as she was, along with her mother, the emotional centre of the film and had clearly made something of her life, excelling in her field. As a result of this incongruence, you're left with this emotional centre losing its impact as the character starts to come off as a plot device, add the brother and lawyer to this category too, used to expose upon her mother's fantastically tragic past and to tie together an exaggeratedly distressing and chronologically mind-boggling familial history.
I loved the music, the setting, the acting and the way the film was shot. The pacing was a little off at times, constant transitions between mother and daughter threatened to become jarring, but at the beginning of the film it worked well and even seemed to be channelling The Godfather Part II at times. It's true that Villeneuve has a real command of his craft and the films I've seen from him show that. The thing I really had a problem with, however, was the story. It was just unnecessarily absurd and over-the-top. If Villeneuve can stick to more realistically hard-hitting fare in future, again I mention Sicario, he'll serve his talents much better in my view.