In Like Flynn

Apparently how Errol Flynn lived his early days adventuring in Australia before Hollywood beckoned.

Whilst there are one or two fun set pieces here, this is a pretty feeble Indiana Jones lite adventure with 2 dimensional characters, some questionable acting talent and a script that must have taken hours to write.

Avoid.

Fact has little to do with this flick. Neither does good storytelling. Every time it starts to roll (which is rare), it comes to a dead stop, and those stops last for a very long time. Frankly, this film is so off with the self-indulgent daisies that one would think it was written and directed by the same person. The thing is stuffed with dull, drawn-out scenes that are only used to provide a breather and story point between the meat of a film but they are made to be the meat with the action merely serving as a distraction. There are some signs of stupidity in this film, such as a backdrop intended to be filmed from a distance, but with the opening view of it - a studio water tower - being so close as to make it look skewed and so lacking in detail as to be obviously fake. A good director would have noticed the badly skewed water tower, but this fellow simply blew it off.

As Flynn's last film was in 1960 (released the year after he died) one wonders about the timing of this film, as virtually no one these days has ever heard of him.

Overall, this movie squeezes about thirty minutes of story into an hour and a half of film. It is passably amusing, sometimes boring, and shows a lack of competence on the part of the director, particularly in the area of storytelling.

This film is a moderately low budget film that uses the 2010s social lens that describes an historical incident. Applying patches of modern irrationality does not help make a good historical film.

The story is interesting in that it captures some of the events and the culture from the era. Australia was only founded a few decades earlier and this movie captures pockets of that cultural ruggedness you'd expect.

Where the movie lets itself down is in the portrayal of Achun (Grace Huang) who should not have been let near a camera. If she had researched an Australian vagabond like Tilly Devine she may have had some idea that tough women of that era didn't run around pushing girl power or behaving like Achun does. The performance of Rose (Isabel Lucas) was almost as misguided. I watched this movie to see William Moseley in action and it was reasonable. David Wenham playing Christian Travers was great fun. There were also solid moments from Clive Standen (Charlie) and Thomas Coquerel (Errol Flynn) who were both solid performers.

The Australian film industry needs a shakeup. It needs to take more risks and it needs to stop pandering. This film doesn't satisfy anyone. The last decade has not been a positive step.

This is a good compilation of Flynn's activities before he became an actor. If you have read his autobiography the story is more or less true. Aussie actors are good and it holds interest. His life in New Guinea and Australia is highly readable and this is a good shot at telling the story. Ain't Shakespeare, but enjoyable.

Cheesy, terrible script, clunky dialogues and terrible acting. If they tried to be cheesy on purpose, it didn't work. Instead, it was painful to watch. The action sequences were the exception-maybe that is where those $10,000,000 went- but they didn't make up for all the flaws. Felt like a waste of time watching it.