In Dubious Battle

I've seen that James Franco is in at least one movie in theaters every week.

For the most part he places himself in the movie so that the movie would get more promotion like a theatrical release (Or so I believe).

This time was different as he directed and stared in this playing a major role as a unionizer, or rather the processor to this in 1933, which seems to be a Cold-hearted con man who just wants to make all workers get a fair shake. Plus the movie has a pretty big name cast with Vincent D'Onofrio Robert Duvall Bryan Cranston with a small role and Selma Gomez of all people trying to put some substance on her resume.

Plus Franco did a good job at directing himself.

It's a small movie with a very big cast, about a great story that still registers with people today.

http://cinemagardens.com

The movie starts off nicely and the story develops around the main characters and adds characters as it goes. However the excellent cast within this movie cannot remove the fact that this movie stars around the 30-minute mark and never really regains momentum. You're waiting for something extraordinary to happen but it never does. Robert Duvall is only in the movie maybe four times of a total of 20 minutes perhaps, he however plays the villain masterfully. In fact all of the cast are excellent, the script on the other hand is a different story. Five stars from me.

Liked this movie? read the book. didn't like this movie? read the book. the book is soooo good, and no matter how good (or bad) the adaption, the movie just can't capture it's essence.

read 'In Dubious Battle' by John Steinbeck.

Here we have a story that was told well - directing and writing was good, cinematography, editing and sound was great, but the pace was very slow and missing substance. It felt like someone monotonic was telling a story, but with no punch-line, or closing plot message. It wasn't a bad film, and the cast were all on point, but is was just missing that wow factor for me. It's a 6/10 from me.

The movie had an excellent cast ranging from some well known younger actors to some well known veteran ones. The acting was great from all sides and things like the visuals were astounding. I was engaged in first half of the film but then started losing interest fast. The movie is about 30 minutes to long and the action in the film is very minuscle. On top of it all the ending had be one of most abrupt I ever seen. Its not worst watch in the world but it fails to live up to expectations.