film criticism by maryann johanson | handcrafted since 1997
Like the book it’s based on, the worldbuilding is intriguing, but the characters and story are strictly cliché. A lazy, confused, and derivative disaster, with plot points and visual and thematic motifs shamelessly stolen from far better movies.
Another videogame adaptation in which empty avatars run around perfunctorily because that’s what the plot requires of them. There’s no humor, no fizz, no movie magic at all.
Ballerina turned whore-spy? This is like a cheap porn scenario, and the Hollywood gloss makes it worse. Risible yet tedious, yet another movie by men that thinks it’s critiquing misogyny yet is indistinguishable from it.
It’s The Hunger Games meets Step Up!
A one-note scenario that never ups the ante on itself, and never even bothers to use its extreme situation to send up office politics or corporate policies.
Problems with authenticity don’t detract from the power of a story about a teen girl pursuing a challenging sport amongst beautiful Mongolian landscapes.
Everything looks great on paper here: Damon’s brawny presence; the smartly staged action, etc. And it’s not unfun. But it feels less black ops than old hat.
Hilariously, casting white Westerners as mortals and deities of the ancient Nile is the least offensive thing about this crime against goofball cinema.
Lazy and trite, with a passive protagonist. It’s as if no one here understands the appeal of the postapocalyptic YA genre it is attempting to piggyback on.
