The Engineer

After just finished watching pretty much the exact same filmmakers and cast in the Inside Man that was very impressive for an indie production, this film does a 180 and was shockingly a huge mess. I'm a fan of "based on true events" films, especially when they are filmed effectively like Inside Man which was done right for an indie B-film, but sadly this wasn't one of those. The entire normally comfortable 92 min runtime dragged on and on endlessly, with horrible pacing, lackluster direction that made even the few action scenes boring, and a story that was choppy and convoluted. It's hard to believe it was the same writers and directors that made both films, as they are night and day. It's too bad, this had promise, but it just failed to deliver the goods.

This film is pretty bad. The actors look as if they are not even trying to act. The story is super slow and seems like it is wasting time just to get the characters to different scenes. There is not much action at all and the action which is on the screen has close ups of the actors faces and a lot of shaking which makes it hard to make out what is going on most of the time. It is a film in which you would not want to watch if you knew it would be of such lack of quality. I would not recommend this movie to anyone I know. The only reason I watched it because the lead actor usually does good work, I am afraid that is no longer the case.

I love Emile Hirsch and he was outstanding in Into The Wild, Lone Survivor and Alpha Dog...but this film was so poorly done and characters were not cast appropriately. Emile looked like a fish out of water trying to portray this character. I would expect so much more from him because I know he's talented. The acting was some of the worst, most lackluster and boring that I've seen to date. I could not even finish the movie. I fell asleep halfway through and I never fall asleep watching movies. Poorly filmed, poorly directed, poorly executed. This story had potential to be interesting and gripping .... but it failed miserably. I would not recommend.

Horrible script, acting, casting (some good actors but the synergy was not there). Not much positive to write unfortunately on what is a very good story otherwise. The spin of some rogue actors taking credit for this event is the icing on the cake.

Every detail of this film is just so cringey and there is little to redeem this at all. This could have been slightly improved with a consultant who knows this world and the areas involved but they failed in that regard as well.

Instead of wasting your time on this movie go read the many pieces written on this event in several great books (Ronen Bergman, Yossi Melman, Dan Raviv, and others).

I don't get how they failed so badly with this movie. They took a bunch of brilliant actors who I have seen excel in other shows (such as Fauda) and made this movie that just doesn't work. I think the biggest mistake was having everyone (Israelis, arabs) speaking in English to each other. It takes away so much authenticity from the movie. They should have just let everyone speak in their own languages and that's it. The way they speak when it's in English just feels so fake and takes away from the acting. There's minimal character development, too little action and you don't get invested in any of the characters. This had SO much potential but utterly failed. I love movies and shows in this genre and couldn't believe the other reviews but they were spot on sadly :(