jmstettner-83145

As bad as this film is, it is also on point. Several reviewers mention "the Red Scare" and the politics of the time, this film tells a very true story. History has proven that all the Red Scare propaganda from Hollywood, Media, and Leftist Politicians was a smoke screen to allow communist and socialist agents to engage in anti-American activity. The Venona Documents released in 1996 and the book Blacklisted By History (Evans 2010) prove that McCarthy was right not by opinions, like the reviewers of this movie use, but by documents, reports, and actual historical fact. As bad as this movie is, and it was intentionally bad to further mock and undermine the warnings about the Red Menace, it was still on point in what it was trying to show. Today, we see the fruit of the Red Invasion in the success and acceptance of the socialist and communist movements in the United States.

This film is just bad. The camera work is poor. It is difficult to qualify the acting because the story is just so poor and the script is so simplistic.

The city is intriguing and kept me watching in hopes that something more would be done with it. But that hope is never realized. Such a missed opportunity. A lot of questions are generated by the circumstances, the characters, and the enviornment, but none of those questions is ever adequately addressed.

I suppose the film could be "artsy" which has always seemed to me to be an excuse for bad work. Nothing is adequately explained. The story starts somewhere in the middle of something which is hinted at. If you like that sort of thing, then you might enjoy this. If you prefer a story, Arcadian or A Quiet Place or even Elevation are probably better choices.

It is disappointing that this would be Eastwood's penultimate film. Technically, the film is very good and very watchable, but the story itself is so frustratingly full of holes, that while watching I was constantly pulled out of the story to question or criticize the glaring mistakes.

Suspension of disbelief is a requirement of fantasy, sci fi, adventure, and action films. It should not be an element in a courtroom drama. This story relies on the viewer being completely stupid or willing to not question anything. From start to finish, nothing that happens in this story is really believable. The level of coincidence is the greatest problem, the viewer really has to shut off the brain and be a sponge to enjoy the film.