jokeco68

This series started well with a pretty gripping set up with an interesting scenario. Unfortunately, as it develops it just got so completely silly with its plot points and story lines that I just couldn't believe anyone could take on so many enemies along with the two key ones that and survive. I suppose the writing team was looking to make for Breaking Bad level intensity but it just got so far fetched with the main character's complete inability to cover his tracks and to have such trust in the waitress who is a known crook along with her entire family it just got plainly silly. Wandering side stories with his kids that made little sense along with his wife's backstory that, in reality, would mean she would be a prime murder suspect in the death of her lover. This was just really silly, the writers should have simplified things and reduced the number of enemies and predicaments as it quickly reached a level of unbelievabilty. If the FBI were really this incompetent then America would have ended as a country decades ago.

I have not seen anything from the series 'Lost' which made J.J. Abrams famous so I didn't come into this movie with high expectations and it's a good thing I didn't either. I just found so much of the action sequences flat, the characters weren't really all that engaging and the story pretty much non-existent. It had really good potential early on with the train crash and played the mystery up fairly well and then the payoff was just not there at all. So much of the action and the entire movie for that matter happens in darkness which makes it easy for F/X department but just made it confusing and tiring for me. The dialogue was hard to pick up, it seemed like the kids were mumbling a lot or something, and what lines you did hear was pure corn. I really have no idea why this was a period piece set in the late '70's either, there was really no reason for it and there was little there to indicate it was the '70's. There was a 'Super8' camera in use and they had to wait for the film to be developed but the 3 day wait wasn't much a of a plot device. Just a really poor movie with very little story, which basically hacked 'E.T' for inspiration. I was expecting something more from a Spielberg production. I get the feeling that Abrams was offered a shot at making a movie but he didn't really have much of an idea what to do for a movie. Very disappointing.

If there was ever an event in history marking where the old world met the new industrialized one it was the First World War and Spielberg spares little time emphasizing the clash as soon as Joey (the horse) reaches France. Suffice to say it is short and brutal although Spielberg,throughout, does not make the movie a gore fest such as 'Saving PrivateRyan'. What I was most struck by was that Joey was a fast, powerful wonder but he never did learn to jump. A recent review from Liam Lacey of the Globe and Mail claimed that Spielberg made the horse mythic in power, indestructible. Far from it, Liam Lacey, and you have completely missed the point. Joey never learned to jump clear of the obstacles, he was only mortal and he was terrified of technology, demonstrated with his meeting of the new war machine, the tank. It was through the truce of two cultures, the the abandonment of conflict and the co-operation towards a common goal that saves Joey from being ignored and lost. A great movie from Spielberg to be sure, it is nice to see that he now has the might and power to take the time to make a movie such as this one that does not go for the plain and simple and tries to convey a message that we need to recognize in this 21st century. Very commendable.