Fallen Icon

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2013)

Slick, audience-tested and engineered as a money-making product, this movie was a disappointment. With a running time of two and a half hours, less would have been more. For the first 90 minutes, the camera-work is shaky and the editing jarring. The color palette used consists mainly of muted grays, making the the film have the look of dirty dishwater. Also, the narrative uses a jumpy, non-linear flashback structure that really doesn't work very well here. The hyper-extended sixty minute denouement of the film settles down into that formulaic reenactment of 9/11 type events we've seen in countless other films wherein a New York-type city is under siege, buildings explode, smoke plumes fill the sky, and planes explode into buildings. I felt queasy watching this kind of urban warfare played for entertainment value in a comic book movie. The villains are quite silly and ill-conceived. On the plus side, many of the casting choices are impeccable and there are numerous moments that are either cool, humorous, or clever. Ultimately, this movie is a hybrid of the style of the (fantastic) Nolan Batman trilogy merged with the plot and action finale of last year's The Avengers. It doesn't work. For the bread and circuses crowd, easily awed by spectacle, the film will play well, but the more critical viewer may be disturbed that this is what we are consuming as pop entertainment.