chaskell

I stayed with this film well beyond the first hour, and struggled to care anything about the story, the characters - or even to find them at all interesting.

Everything about these characters is cliched and formulaic - despite seeming efforts to give them depth, there is hardly anything that gets beneath the superficiality of the characters or their predictability; just a lot of well worn scripted inane dialogue.

Steven Soderbergh is so much better than this. Too bad he front-loaded this movie with a lot of gratuitous and unneeded stripper routines, and then tried to make a story out of it and give it meaning. It has none. These are just really boring people doing boring stuff. How did he ever get himself trapped in this mediocre effort?

The series has two incredibly powerful things going for it: a terrific story arc; and a powerfully cohesive, compelling and complex plot.

But, seriously? The rest is just stupid.

The characters are caricatures instead of internally driven agents.

The dialogue is cliche-ridden instead of genuinely interactive and responsive.

The scenes are contrived to move a pre-conceived plot forward instead of allowing the plot to emerge organically and inevitably.

And so many things are just too "convenient."

The Wire was stretching conventional television. And did a pretty good job doing it.

But it did not break the mold. In fact, it is incredibly cliche-filled. And laughably so.

Poor writing is at the core.

Instead of telling a compelling and informative narrative, this is just click-bait after click-bait news footage strung together that seeks to titillate.

There is a powerful story here. But you won't find it in this exhibit of cheap and lazy film-making.