Be Prepared to

Rating: 3/10 (4 January 2013)

Well, this was certainly an improvement over the overrated predecessor / prequel. For the first hour, watching the film was the equivalent of enduring the torture shown in the film, much worse... In fact, I have never seen so many people get up and go to the bathroom or get some much needed caffeine. Mercifully, this very long film has a very good second act, but it doesn't redeem the rest of this film.
There is attention to detail but very little suspense/dramatic flair for the first two thirds of the film, as we just witness plenty of conversations, meetings, kind of see the process that leads to the ultimate find of the century. Unfortunately, unlike the much better "Argo", it is all shown with no regard to pacing. Much of the acting here consists of frowns, a couple of frustrated stares and the inclusion of a couple of expletives to spice up the dialogue. Personally, I don't know how these type of words make anyone look either tough or intelligent. Some people have been impressed by the type of acting we see here, but acting is supposed to provoke some type of feedback from the audience other than drowsiness. Mercifully, the director places a couple of suicide attacks when we are about to collapse from exhaustion, and interesting enough, we don't really care what happens to the people in those scenes.
Unlike, Affleck's film, we never really get to understand the background of the people involved, particularly the film's protagonist. It's almost like if we are supposed to develop empathy, but other than some pouting and some cutesy scrawling on a piece of glass, we don't seem much emotional range here. Yes, there's a sole tear at the end, and an honest exchange between Maya and her boss when he demands to know what else she has done before, and the answer is as puzzling to him as it is to the audience.
We do get to visit more exotic locales, rarely get to know who inhabits these regions. They're nothing else but pieces of the art decoration in the movie. To be fair, many of the American agents are nothing but stereotypes. I read somewhere that this heroine and some of the colleagues where compared to the people of "The Silence of the Lambs", and that the unraveling of the events here is similar to "All The President's Men" drama, and the truth is that people who made that evaluation should go back and study Pakula's masterpiece, a film that gave us personal involvement, intrigue, and exposed the audience to all the participants' nature. We felt the fear of those who dared to speak. We understood the way deep throat made his approaches, and the difficulties encountered by the reporters. Nothing like that occurs here. We might as well be viewing a bad travelogue where the camera zooms in and out of the different locations, but we don't even talk to the locals.
However, the whole thing is not lost because when the much, much, much awaited mission finally arrives, we are treated to very good scenes, and things finally pick up. From the moment we see the specially designed aircraft to the scene when the final identification is made, we are treated to almost a completely different film. There is tension, suspense, some very effective editing, and events hit with the right impact, even the technical aspects of the film are renewed with much more dynamic energy. It is dark, and we feel the claustrophobia of the night vision goggles. We finally dread and welcome the force of the explosives. We have human faces and emotions on the faces of both parties. There is a very touching scene involving a soldier and a child. And, we have the imminent race against the clock, as the enemy forces are about to arrive. Now the explosions make sense, and we only wished the rest of the film matched this.
Overall, character development is very poor, and the story suffers from endless repetition. It is the reenactment of one very important historical event, but it has not been given the proper treatment. Thankfully, other Hollywood talent has put together projects that deal with similar themes, offer us more information and enough historical exposure to what leads to actual events. I was one of many who got up and cheered when the plane flew out of the danger zone in that other film; this time I was just cheering because the ordeal was finally over and I could run out of the theater.