AvianZoo

I went into this with no idea about what this film was about, other than it was supposedly life-affirming and feel-good.

The structure of the movie wasn't something I expected, but understand the intentions. The movie starts with the 3rd act, which is completely detached from the bulk of the movie. I don't want to add spoilers, so won't go into too much detail but to me, this 3rd act sets up a completely different movie to the one that plays out. Again, I understand the intentions, but I was ready for a completely different type of movie by the end of the 3rd act.

Acts 1 & 2 are great and more in-fitting with what I presume are the intentions of the story, but even here, I wouldn't say "life-affirming" or "feel-good" are the emotions I left with. In the end I left with melancholy and sadness, both at the story of Chuck, but also what this movie could have been.

Production, acting and cinematography are all excellent, so no complaints there. It's just that 3rd act at the beginning that threw me. As I said above, I was ready for a totally different type of movie, which I think would have been far more interesting to explore i.e. - end of the world and, rather more interestingly, not setting up a complete hellscape/dystopia, but instead seeing individual and society's reactions as they try to cling on to normality and watching things evolve as things progressively decline.

On the whole, I enjoyed this film, but I didn't "love" it, nor would I sing its praises too much if quizzed about it.

I was looking forward to this movie for some time and was thinking it was going to be same kind of feel as the original.

The original went for a more consistent and serious tone and in doing so, gave it an element of credibility and led to a very engaging film, with a good connection to the main characters. The second seems to take a different route, with semi-frequent elements of humor, which just don't fit with the seriousness of the non-humor parts of the story.

The problem is that this movie asks you to take the plot seriously, but will then throw in a scene where Christian Wolff goes speed-dating and has "hacked" the Algorithm used by the organisers of the speed-dating event, complete with photoshopped images of Christian Wolff in fake scenarios, and then asks you to forget all of that and take the character seriously again, as the plot moves back to the dark tones of the main story. All that does is chip away at the credibility of the lead characters and undermines the seriousness of the main plot and undermines a lot of the action. I could understand this approach if this was what the first movie tried to instill, but those that have seen the first movie will know that's not the case.

In summary, this movie seems to have come out as either an action movie with a serious plot and ill-fitting humor, or a comedy movie with an ill-fitting serious plot and action. Whichever way you look at it, large parts of the movie just don't fit with each other. It's almost as if the movie was written by two groups of people, with very different intentions for the outcome.

This isn't a bad movie, but it's far from great.

It worked well for me as a Monday night movie, looking to forget the day at work and that I still have 4 days to the weekend. I wouldn't make this your main Saturday night movie, but it's fine as an Audio/Visual snack for a weekday evening.

As someone else has said, the main draws here are the two A-list leads, which are greatly aided by the female lead, who gives the plot another necessary dimension.

The political messaging is largely kept to little detail, but does get over-idealistic. It's also sad to see the old Russians = bad stereotype. Please Hollywood, be more imaginative with antagonists, otherwise it just comes across as propaganda for war.