It's a good movie, that should have been excellent but ended up just "good". It's visually magnificent, it has very good acting and it's basic idea is original and even poignant but. There are a few very big buts in stopping it from reaching the potential heights it should've reached.
It's getting lost in its own meandering tale, though we've all figured out the point it wanted to make long before it spells it out on the screen. It want's too much to demonstrate it's about storytelling so all the stories we see on screen are so heavily narrated that many of their charming characters end up as puppets with only glimpse of the character they should have, preventing us from really caring for them or in other words leaving us uninvolved with big chunks of the story. The combination of a long meandering plot line that keeps the audience uninvolved is an obstacle almost no movie can survive.
If I did enjoy it it's mainly because of the leading couple - Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton - no they're not giving a gut wrenching performance - they're simply very very professional keeping the convoluted plotline from losing us altogether anchoring the viewers to the story without turning it into a soap opera, and it could very easily turn into one so I'm definitely grateful for that professionalism. I simply can't help wondering what could have happened had it fulfilled the potential it most certainly has.
