Great ! -- but shaking camera overused.

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2007)

Great movie, very entertaining and great ending....but geeezz...
I had a headache 5 minutes into the film! Every scene- regardless of mood - was shot with an excessive amount of "shake, vibrate, move, quick-pan, zoom-in, zoom-out, etc" technique. :( good grief!
The following is very "opinionated" and subjective I suppose...
I like the use of these techniques(shaking/zooming/partially obscuring subjects with foreground objects or people) in films like Babel or Saving Private Ryan, but this one went way way overboard with it and hence the effectiveness (of the camera) is quickly destroyed, because there's no visual dynamic to contrast dramatic to subdued scenes.
Its great stuff at times, but I shouldn't have to guess at what MIGHT be happening in the fight scenes, and sort of make up my own version as it plays out in front of me... "ok, I guess there he twisted his arm and, wow! that must have been a kick or something...and oh dude! what happened then? I guess maybe he stabbed him or something". And I shouldn't have to wonder "why is the camera shaking, jerking, zooming, panning left/right during this subdued scene with regular conversation between 2 people??"
Music varies with scenes to convey the intended mood, right?... Well, if there's no effort to vary the cinematography techniques to convey the mood of individual scenes, isn't that like painting a picture of a grassy field against a sunset and using red for the grass and red for the sun and red for the sky? ...imho.
I don't know - some people might like it constantly shaking with no attention to "composition" (in its classic sense) and no slow steady dramatic pans- but I need a little break from the jerky movement occasionally.
Great film otherwise... great ending too.