This terrific Iraq War picture is as anti-war as it gets, adopting a pure, minimalist aesthetic but operating with a maximalist Oscar-worthy sound design, as several soldiers holed up in enemy territory await support and rescue.
Cruise remains committed as ever as Hollywood’s death-defying action star par excellence, but this is such a slog and bogged down by the need to justify the knotty, plotty ideas of the earlier movie.
Things go dreadfully south during a wild night in a Louisiana juke joint in Coogler’s most original work yet, marked by patient setups, foreshadowing, and playful blending of genres in this fervent, intoxicating music-horror.
Tightly structured, verbose and eschewing high-stakes action, Soderbergh’s deceptively genial chess game of a spy thriller conflates the professional and the personal as one half of a married couple working for the same intelligence agency is suspected of being treasonous.
Bong’s latest may lack a distinct thematic through-train and the plot occasionally wobbles along, but its mix of sardonic wit and fun sci-fi action should please most audiences as an expendable man is sent on suicidal scouting missions and ‘reprinted’ back again.
Eternality Tan 