Culture Wars

Rating: Null/10 (4 December 2004)

Spoilers herein.
Sad to say, finally Bruckheimer had the makings of a pretty good movie and blew it by engaging a non-director director. These things can be successful on their own terms - even with most of the flaws this one has - if only a few necessities are satisfied. The thing has to have coherence - not story coherence, but a consistent being. The art direction, writing, acting, editing, framing of shots and such all have to come from the same spot on whatever spectra are acknowledged. Usually that means a position on the "are we taking this seriously or not" spectrum, plus a few others.
The key one has to do with the pulse of the thing. Every film has a rhythm, every living film at least. But all the components of the thing have to key into that pulse. It cannot be decided toward the end in editing. Here, every component goes its own way, even the score which seems to have been borrowed from other projects.
I'm convinced that a decent director could have made something worth watching out of this. Of course a decent director would have changed a few procedural things that weren't working. But the important thing is he would have made the thing have a coherent pulse.
Its too bad, because the mythology behind this has gas, more even as a first instance of a genre than original mummy and Frankenstein movies and as much as the western. There's a huge literature relating to mystical traditions of the US Founding Fathers, much more than the ready fiction that they founded the country on 'Christian' principles. It is all bogus, of course but has a the patina of reality that films like to puff up.
Could have made a strong film out of this. You can see that the producers at least had a glint of this culture wars play in mind, because Diane Kruger is made to present that sort of vacant cowgirl persona invented by country music.
And that business about 'giving' to the world (without mentioning that it was taken from the world).
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.