Signet

Others have written that they were distracted by the surgical or chemical alterations to Helen Hunt's face that make every one of her onscreen appearances painful and off-putting. But, even if she still looked like a normal human being nothing could save this odd and ugly film. It simply does not make sense and it doesn't help that there is not a sympathetic character in the movie. Some films are just awful. And this is one of them.

Although The Power of the Dog has received highly positive reviews on this site and others I must demur. I found the story and the pace of the movie to be so dragged out that I had to fight bouts of boredom to watch it to the finish and this in spite of the earnest performances by the actors in roles that were, sometimes, just plain silly. In particular I found Kirsten Dunst's character to be wholly unsympathetic, clearly not the intention of the writers or the director. As for Benedict Cumberbatch, what was most remarkable about his performance was how expertly he was able to slip into the walk and accent of an early 20th Century American cowboy, albeit one supposedly with an Ivy League education. Otherwise what he gives to the role was very often only grimaces and glares and not the Oscar-class acting described by many other reviewers. For this, I blame the director and not Mr. Cumberbatch.

What I took away from this movie is that one must come to it already a Jane Campion devotee and she delivers what her fans want from her. As one who isn't caught up in her hype, I did not like this movie much at all.

I wish this film was better. Daniel Craig brings all his best chops to this Bond epic but it is a sad, miserable movie that attempts to make up in dragged out chase sequences to cover for the fact that the script itself is unworthy of Fleming's fiction and Bond's previous incarnations. For an action movie with a lot of running, shooting, and killing, it seems, at its heart, disjointed, strangely dull, and unexciting. To be honest, for me it was a waste of time and money.