Light on the main Ingredient; Story

Rating: 7/10 (14 April 2019)

It's actually pretty sad to see a film that has so much going for it, with incredible photography and music (reminiscent of a good Malick flick) and great performances, fall so short due to a lack of story.
Much has been said about the beautiful and visceral scenes, the gripping tense moments and the great score, but all of this is not enough to warrant greatness. What the picture lacks is a complex story. The story we are presented just doesn't hold up to scrutiny, somehow managing to be unexplored and overstretched and managing to squeeze logical inconsistencies together with amazingly realistic scenes.
Take the relationship between Glass and his son; you're telling me there wasn't time to explore this in 160+minutes of screen time? Except for in the hokey dream sequence scenes of the movie that have to be the weakest part and an obvious crutch. Apart from that, having the "villain", presumably illiterate, break into a strong safe just to be followed by only 2 men is a weak writing crutch.
Altogether a good movie, but I would argue Iñarritu's worst so far.