Dick-114

I can't quarrel with those who give this film high praise for powerfully representing the complex humanity of both the oppressor and oppressed with first-rate film-making. Essentially it tells how a capable, peaceable bystander is bullied into becoming a "freedom fighter" (or "terrorist" if you will), at cost. BUT given most of the film's present-tense dramatic intensity, I was disappointed by the sudden lapse into voice-over past tense narration at the end, hastily tacked on it would seem to tell us that though the story seems a downer, historically it all turned out well after all. I'd rather have seen another hour -- maybe less -- that continued the tale on its own terms -- the subject is epic enough to deserve it. Or else seen all that end material separated from the film itself, an end flourish upwards amid the end-credits, performing the job but leaving the main story its own integrity. Too bad. An excellent film, strong but in this regard imperfect.

The movie was marvelously, subtly, powerfully, and wickedly scripted and acted, so we believe until close to the end that a great injustice is occurring, though the moral justification for it shifts as we go, and we're whipsawed deciding which of the two characters is committing it, or has done so. When the situation finally clarifies for the audience (because a character behaves apparently out of char5acter, until we grasp its significance), the intense mind faking ends and the plot moves into the merely melodramatically improbable. Then ends on such an improbability, given the character as portrayed, driven by thin pseudo logic that unfortunately strips much of the earlier action of meaning, and leaves lots of loose ends the final shot pretends aren't there.

Too bad. Difficult to watch for 4/5 of it, because so well conceived and made, so tensely convincing. Then difficult to watch at the very end because so merely hokey. A pity.