Great script, Great Actors, Terrible Director

Rating: 5/10 (18 December 2006)

Oh what this movie could have been in the hands of a competent director. It is just difficult to watch such heavy handed directing and distracting cinematography. I realize that a director wants to convey pacing and mood with they style of the lighting and the movement of the camera, but the style used in this movie comes across as a bad music video and an attempt to be art-house hip.
Can't we just watch an interesting story without overbearing technique? Do we really need low-key lighting, heavy grain, jump cuts, white flash frames, and the stupid and distracting jerky-cam? This movie succeeds if the director wanted us to feel nauseous and have a headache for 2 hours.
The movie is shot in a gritty, grainy, depressing style with camera work that looks like they just gave an 8mm home movie camera to a 4 year old and let it be edited by his younger sister using band-aids and a glue stick. I have a real problem with this "style" and can't say enough bad things about this kind of cinematography. It's annoying and apparently panders to 13 y/o Playstation and MTV addicts with ADD. Maybe director's of photography think that if they use a blue/green transfer, or skip the bleach step on a print or do whatever nonsense digitally to make the image look completely artificial, they will win a technical achievement award.
When will they realize that part of the glamor of Hollywood is the beautiful wide-screen images? It doesn't always have to be Technicolor type color, after all the X-Files is different than Oklahoma!, but if I wanted to experience what Tony Scott has given us with this movie, I would take LSD. Save this kind of experimental film-making for the 10 minute student shorts at USC. It's the story, stupid. When technique overshadows the story you've forgotten what it is to be a filmmaker.