Bezos

First off, this was not a good film. Nothing new here at all for anyone who's watched TV like Silicon Valley and other startup related content. The direction is clumsy and flawed and there isn't enough interesting going on to make it worth watching. Of course if you want to learn how Jeff Bezos thinks of himself and his life, by all means watch this movie because it beats spending days reading a book on the topic.

But there is nothing adversarial at all going on here either. In order to become a multi-billionaire and own a monopolistic corporation like Amazon, many people and small businesses have to be hurt along the way, not to mention the environment. What would have made this movie interesting would have been the portrayal of how Bezos personally dealt with issues like overworked employees, the unionization (or attempts) of various warehouse/distro facilities, the lobbying efforts and countless dollars spent buying US government representatives and senators, the foray by Amazon's hosting and data divisions into extra-constitutional government surveillance of Americans by way of taxpayer funded contracts with the Defense Department/Pentagon/NSA, the way Bezos decided how to game a lot of Amazon sellers out of revenue through various algorithmic quackery or straight up ripping off ideas (one wonders if Bezos had any role in the Amazon Basics brand that offers knockoffs of already fine products), etc.

Instead we get a hagiography with a little nod thrown in for his ex-wife. We don't get to learn why he decided to become "buff" or the efforts he is making in biological sciences/cybernetics/etc. To try to live forever, his competition with Elon Musk regarding the aforementioned government contracts, the race to mars, or any of it.

Two word summary of this movie: Pointless Hagiography.

I was very interested in watching this and expected it to be much better.

It took me 3 or 4 sessions to get through it, because my wife and kids kept complaining about how horrible it was, meaning, I had to watch it when they weren't in the room.

From the writing, the directing, the music, the editing, the pacing, to the performances by the actors, everything comes across like a "no budget" student film, which is disappointing, when you consider that there were other "limited location" movies to look to as examples,... GlenGarry Glen Ross, Talk Radio, 12 angry men, etc..

All of which that were able to create more entertaining and note worthy films, out of much smaller and more contained stories.

So many missed opportunities.

First of all, I acknowledge that making anything except a straight factual biography on Bezos is an attempt in futility as there's no way it will reach people.

Bezos is a polarising figure as his story as a person equals that of Amazon, with all that it represents to different people: a success story, a villanous corporation, a pointless foray into commercial space flight, worker rights suppression, a consumer godsend, environmental disaster and so on.

Something that brushes past these topics having any other reason except factual authenticity is going to get a pushback.

To make up for dodging what makes Bezos polarising, the movie would have to be an exercise in art: acting, story writing, a human side of Bezos, going deep into personal issues, the make of the man and so on.

Long story short, this movie fails across the board. The acting is all over the place, I'd call it decent but decent is just not enough to save this. Cinematography is good ... but buried under bland writing and a story that brings nothing to the table.

There's really nothing here as everything that could potentially make people curious is just glossed over, including Bezos' divorce despite the fact that his wife was also a driving force behind his Amazon empire building. This point alone is unforgivable.

I was shocked to see that of all the ways Bezos could have showed his story to the world, this was the one he'd chosen.

The story isn't bad, of course, but the movie seems to be so poorly executed, from how it was directed, written and the acting.

The film talks about how Amazon started, from its very beginning. The nice part is to see his ex wife's input in the very early days, the amount of dedication they put into transforming an ideia into the company that it is today and the difficulties they faced. No doubt it is an inspiring story.... Just it was surprising to me that it seemed like a very low budget, weird project.

... by people who've only watched the trailer.

I can understand where they're coming from and where they're going, and I'd like to respond to them preemptively - it's not as good as all the 10/10s, and it's not as bad as all the 1/10s.

It's ... surprisingly (surprisingly for a movie made by a company about said company's owner) well made. Not really a piece of propaganda (though "I made a movie about myself see how self-critical and honest I am" is also a common piece of propaganda).

I can see why it's not interesting enough to catch your eye, and definitely not something you'll not want to talk to your friends about (definitely not something you will tweet about saying how much you like it ) and it's an easy target for the look-at-how-cool-I-am-because-I-hate-it kind of people. I'd like to say, if you feel curious, it's worth your curiosity. I didn't say it's worth your time, I said it's worth your curiosity.