Evil_Fred

Firstly , let me start of by saying i am dutch and therefore my opinion mite be slightly biased.Secondly , although the story is of grand importance to our history and epic of scope, i was worried (mainly by the choice of director, who's previous track record includes a whole lot of terrible sequels to B movies), and the choice of dutch movie producers to almost always (like 95% of the time) go for the safe picture, that being a not too artsy or original film (mostly being comedies, romantic comedies or family films). This film looked like it was going to be another Nova Zembla, the first big scale dutch epic (not counting of course Paul verhoeven en black book, but thats different, cos its verhoeven who is more known as a Hollywood director than of dutch films) that resulted in a total yawn fest. What a terrible waste

But this one turned out to be better than expected. Tho at times the over use of Bay-isms (such as over extended slo mo shots or using the story to support the visuals and action scenes rather than the other way around ,which did make it feel like a second rate pirates of the Caribbean at times) the flow and tone of the movie worked and it was never really boring at over 2 hours. Tho from time to time the story was obviously embellished for dramatic purposes, which resulted in it again looking more like a Disney adventure movie than a true historic epic. But , with overall good performances by the entire cast( and a gorgeous soundtrack) , the movie was quite good/worked well. A pleasant surprise.

Enjoy! Evil fred

Though this movie is well crafted and i enjoyed it over all, there were still a number of things wrong with it. One being style over substance. The story is a bit predictable and it seemed like more time was spent on the look than the story. Even tho this is a sci/fi, it lacked credibility. Some things just seemed veeeery hard to believe ( like a train staying on track for years on years when in a few hours they nearly derail). Better to have left these out or to work them out in the story better.

This movie is adapted from a French short (apocalyptic) story , also like 12 monkeys. Tho an entirely different movie, the concept( end of the world, how do we survive) is the same. In 12 monkeys it seemed like the story fitted the narrative perfectly, when in this one the pieces of the puzzle didn't seem to fit as well, with many characters who we don't care for and added visuals who just seemed they're there for the view. A few of the actors stand out, most notably Tilda swinton, but the rest seems like they-re there just for added star power. Also, the pacing was not all that, since IMO it could have been 15 minutes shorter.Tho it was a nice portrayal of class difference. An entertaining watch.

Enjoy Evil_fred

Unfortunately you first have to make sense of the movie in some way to understand what you are seeing, and in this film thats near impossible. When making a film the idea is (i thought) to make a firstly a compelling story/plot. Tho this movie did (sorta) achieve that it failed to bring it to the audience in such a way that it is either compelling of even comprehensible. At first i wondered whether the look of the movie was because of budget, then i found out it was intentional and took hours upon hours to make a single minute of film. So the idea was to make it look as gritty and abstract as possible. That the film makers gloriously achieved.

But besides that, what exactly was the point? Hardly any entertainment , perhaps only shock value even tho that got old rather quick. At the end of the movie I was left confused , asking myself whether it was an visually abstract original , unique film or a piece of art overdrawn with one or two moments of shock value repeated over and over. This is probably the most subjective movie i have ever seen, tho i haven't seen many films like this, closest that compare would be ERASERHEAD and TETSUO. Those both had at least story lines you could (sort of) follow , this movie ,if you don't watch out, could just easily be a bunch of awkward,bizarre , incoherent mumbo jumbo. For a selective audience.

Enjoy_ Evil_Fred