davidshort10

I'm trying to stick with it but it's hard. I subscribed to Netflix to watch The Crown and I enjoy some of the stuff available. they attracted me because of excellent cast, but I am struggling to stay with it. The principal people are plainclothes English police but they are always referred to as Detective this or Detective that. Similarly with the German police. But no one is called 'Detective' in the British police. In plainclothes, you begin as a Detective Constable, then you are a Detective Sergeant, then you are a Detective Inspector, then a Detective Chief Inspector, then a Detective Superintendent, then a Detective Chief Superintendent. Rank is precious and alway referred to. The daft, angry Indian detective once berates a witness for not deferring to her because she is the 'senior detective'. Well, how would the witness know when even we don't know if she is a sergeant and her younger colleague is a colleague? It's just sloppy. Lots of discussion about missing typewritten notes but nobody thinks to try and read the typewriter ribbon. And if a burglar came to take the typewritten notes, wouldn't he take the ribbon? Just nuts.

What's wrong with this movie? Let me try and count the ways. First of all, it is not a film. It is just something audiovisual that drags on and on and on with no attempt at three acts. It seems to think it is heroic for a journalist to hang around in Afghanistan, risking her not only her own life through her incompetence but all those around her, who know better and are cleverer and more competent, but have to obey her because of their relative poverty. And Tina Fey's character and supposed 'growth' throughout the film is meant to make us admire people who are in the end parasites and life wreckers. Martin Freeman's character in particular is obnoxious and unbelievable.

The presence of Sean Connery can often rescue a dire movie but not when it is a truly dire movie because one of the main actors, Catherine Zeta Jones, has not talent whatsoever. This Welsh woman can mimic an American accent but that is all she does, mimic not convince, nor can she convince us that she is a savvy , experienced, hard-nosed insurance investigator. Without her, the movie might have been a success, but her presence was required because she was married to Michael Douglas. She has never provided a memorable performance in any of her movies, and not even in the little English TV comedy drama from which she sprang. She cannot even make the light romance with a much older man, Connery, believable, even though she had plenty of experience with her aged husband.