Squandered opportunity

Rating: 3/10 (3 January 2019)

A good film exists somewhere within this mess of a movie. The script and acting are solid, but poor direction desperately marred the source material and did not serve the talent contracted to make this movie. The film is desperately uneven in tone, lacks measured and concise editing, suffers from drab cinematography, utilizes one of the most annoying musical cues put to film (that drones on endlessly not once, but twice in key points of the film), and overuses a fishbowl optic that is self-conscious and distracting. Regarding editing, this film stretches to just over two hours when 80-90 minutes would have tightened up the pacing much more. There are a number of needless, self-indulgent scenes that no doubt delighted the director, but served no purpose in telling what should be an interesting story. Too bad...a better director could have made a pretty good movie out of this.