Post by PhantomKnight on Dec 12, 2016 20:20:31 GMT -5
Every year, there seems to be at least one movie that's met with generally solid/good reviews by most, while I end up loving it even more. This year, that title can maybe go to X-Men: Apocalypse...but now I'm leaning more toward Allied, which is pretty much the movie I'd been wanting to see from director Robert Zemeckis ever since all of one year ago, when I saw his well-made disappointment of a thriller, What Lies Beneath, from the year 2000. Allied further proves the director's chops in thriller filmmaking, but one of the best things about Allied is that it's not just a straight-up thriller. Instead, it's an intriguing romantic mystery that uses thriller aspects to enhance its story, and it's a marriage of genres that really ended up working for me.
Allied is of the slow-burn mold, starting off showing Brad Pitt's and Marion Cotillard's spies meeting on a mission in Casablanca in 1942, and showing how their relationship builds from there. I'll go ahead and get my main, real gripe with the film out of the way: after such a good start with those first 30-45 minutes, the film speeds things up with two significant time jumps that slightly undercut the effectiveness of the central relationship at first, but the performances from Pitt and Cotillard are so strong, that they're still able to keep you invested. On the other hand, if there were more scenes filling in the gaps, this movie may have run the risk of being overlong, so small sacrifices. The screenplay also does a damn good job of keeping the mystery of is Cotillard a double agent or not alive, sprinkling in bursts of violence when appropriate. In terms of Robert Zemeckis, his directing style here is very Hitchcockian in nature -- subtly suspenseful -- and he also utilizes a nicely minimalist score from Alan Silvestri in his successful endeavor to create real atmosphere for the film.
So all in all, I pretty much loved Allied. It's strongly acted, engagingly written and fairly masterfully directed, thus creating -- for me -- one of the year's best films.
****/****
Allied is of the slow-burn mold, starting off showing Brad Pitt's and Marion Cotillard's spies meeting on a mission in Casablanca in 1942, and showing how their relationship builds from there. I'll go ahead and get my main, real gripe with the film out of the way: after such a good start with those first 30-45 minutes, the film speeds things up with two significant time jumps that slightly undercut the effectiveness of the central relationship at first, but the performances from Pitt and Cotillard are so strong, that they're still able to keep you invested. On the other hand, if there were more scenes filling in the gaps, this movie may have run the risk of being overlong, so small sacrifices. The screenplay also does a damn good job of keeping the mystery of is Cotillard a double agent or not alive, sprinkling in bursts of violence when appropriate. In terms of Robert Zemeckis, his directing style here is very Hitchcockian in nature -- subtly suspenseful -- and he also utilizes a nicely minimalist score from Alan Silvestri in his successful endeavor to create real atmosphere for the film.
So all in all, I pretty much loved Allied. It's strongly acted, engagingly written and fairly masterfully directed, thus creating -- for me -- one of the year's best films.
****/****
