Sentinelle

Exactly as the title says, this is a fine movie if you have absolutely nothing to do with your evening.

I was entertained by this movie, but I can definitely see a lot of flaws. Especially the plot holes. There are so many holes in the logic of this movie that are more than enough to ruin your immersion if you think about them too much.

So I tried not to, shut down the critical part of your brain for two hours and you will get some enjoyment out of this.

The setting is nice, the whole one location thing is always a joy for me too, the acting is decent. Some people in cast are very easy on the eyes as well which is a plus too.

Firstly the earth has had no glacial, mountaintop or polar ice whatsoever, none, for 90% of its history. Including the geologically incredibly recent conditions before the current ice age. Secondly if all the ice and snow in the world melted, every ounce of it, se levels would go up less than 70 meters. 90% of the current dry and arable landmass of earth would still be here. Nothing can make just "two continents" except for continental drift creating amalgamations and super continents, and that will be over tens of millions of years, and there would be roughly the same dry land and sea covered ratio.

I just mention that because a couple of the people involved in the making of this have bizarrely claimed the set up of two small remaining patches of dry land is a "warning" due to climate change, when that is absurd.

The general human premise, of an distant rare and isolated military or colonial outpost or outposts, though would be a better premise and has served a lot of good literature. Greek poet Constantine Cavafy long form poem served as inspiration for the novel "Tartar Steppe" and the recent "Waiting for the Barbarians" with Johnny Depp, Mark Rylance and Robert Pattinson.

Those are good treatments of this idea. This dumbed down "Last Sentinel" is just mind numbingly bad. The plot twists become tedious, and in fact are so telegraphed as to be cringe. No one in the film can act. And you will be checking your watch every five minutes as more and more boring and pointless filler plods by.

3/10.

The title says it all. This movie drags on from one unclear moment to the next. After spending nearly two hours with it, I think it could have made an interesting short, not a feature length movie. To its credit and the actors' credit, they were fully realized and animated people. Very good character development and done very early in the film. But to what purpose? There are movies that leave open questions that one can think about and were created to good effect. In this movie, it leaves too many open questions that one can't resolve. In the end, I didn't care about the characters, I didn't care what they did or why they did it. The movie left me completely flat and disappointed I spent money and time to see it.

The featured review rated this 3 and boring. I totally disagree. The film subtly tells the story of what war does to people in various ways.

4 people (2 military, 2 civilian) are aboard this sentinel tower located between the only two countries left in the world after flooding has covered all other places. Ok, somewhat unbelievable.

This tower has a device that can change the fate for the entire planet and is meant as a fail safe device if the second country attacks this first country, who constructed this sentinel tower.

The problem is that they signed up for 2 years, and their relief is well overdue. They experience all sorts of communication issues. Then something appears, and changes the dynamics of the story. If you don't like growing tension, then I guess you'd call that boring, but I took it more as a who-done-it mystery.

Imagine being out in the middle of the ocean between two warring countries, and you are the last line of defense on a rotting decrepid metal structure. That enough creates the tension.

The captain is a tough military lifer, and he plays that role well. His corporel seems less strict but still follows his orders. The two civilians just want to get paid and go back to dry land.

There's plenty of story here, enveloped in rain, fog, mystery. The acting is decent as is the story. The cinematography does a great job of depicting the isolation, along with creepy noises and screenshots to ramp up the excitement.

I suggest you give it a view. Not a bad flick.

Enjoy.

Although the few actors and locations are very good for what seems a low budget movie, the pacing and tension works very well at the start, and the developments are smooth enough to carry the film for a while... the movie lasts two hours for a plot that is not particularly worth the wait, considering it doesn't stick the landing with its disappointing ending. The best compliment I can give it : it's not particularly bad or annoying at any point (see Interceptor for comparison purposes). But there's a lack of cohesion, specially with the message (if there even is one).. a lack of action, emotion, satisfaction or anything to hang on to.