‘Agent Carter’ Premiere Review

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on January 6, 2015

With Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. well into its sophomore year and four Netflix shows on the horizon, Marvel is looking to stake its place in a television landscape in which rival DC Comics has already firmly established itself with Arrow and The Flash. But before it launches its Netflix salvo, Marvel has Agent Carter on the docket, which follows up with British Agent Peggy Carter’s story after World War II ended and Captain America was left lost on ice. Peggy now works for the Strategic Scientific Reserve in 1946 New York City, and when she’s not dealing with everyday sexism in the workplace from her male coworkers, she’s thrust into a plot that has scientist/businessman Howard Stark accused of selling weapons to the enemy.

Unsurprisingly, the shadow of Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, looms large over this 2-hour premiere (which is really just two back-to-back episodes). The beginning starts off with quick flashbacks to scenes from Captain America: The First Avenger, followed by a few more instances sprinkled in later on, including a replay of the tearful goodbye that Peggy has with Steve. She’s still clearly broken up over his disappearance, but not enough that it breaks her spirit while on the job. Peggy has to keep her guard up in a workplace that doesn’t treat her seriously even in her position as an agent. She even tells a coworker who sticks up for her to back off because she can take care of herself.

But there’s not enough time to deal with that when her friend Stark is a fugitive from the law and a mysterious organization named Leviathan is hanging in the background and possibly working with the chemical corporation Roxxon. The weapons storyline has shades of the first Iron Man movie, where Howard’s son Tony would feel guilt for his weapons falling into the wrong hands. Dominic Cooper shows up as Howard Stark for not even five minutes just to make an appearance and ride off into the night, so Peggy ends up forming a working relationship with Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis, played by James D’Arcy.

These first two episodes set up the relationship between Carter and Jarvis as the center of the show, and the repartee between star Hayley Atwell and D’Arcy (who looks and sounds remarkably like an older Benedict Cumberbatch) is the best thing about them. Otherwise the episodes are mostly standard Marvel Studios fare. The 1940s production design is quite elegant and just stylized appropriately enough for the comic book tone, even in the face of ugly digital photography that washes out the striking colors of the sets. In the Marvel Universe tradition, there’s a dangerous glowing orb/MacGuffin striking up trouble, and there are plenty of nods for comic fans out there that thankfully don’t feel forced in just for fan service. The movies have already established a long running history throughout this universe and the show has fun playing with that by laying the groundwork for the future.

Early on, Agent Carter insinuates that it’s going to have yet another hero who leads a secret double life from her roommate, but gladly that gets dropped because it’s a trope that has been worn out too many times in this current television age. On the flipside, these opening episodes leave a majority of its supporting cast, including Chad Michael Murray and the great Shea Whigham of Boardwalk Empire fame, to play rather flat characters. Apart from Peggy, Jarvis, and a waitress that befriends Peggy, these episodes are much more concerned with getting the plot rolling rather than creating a fully rounded stable of characters.

There’s just enough espionage and action, including a well-done brawl atop a moving van, to hold the attention, but if the show wants to have some legs and avoid the early pitfalls of S.H.I.E.L.D. it’s going to have to step it up when it comes to its characters, as witty and delightful as Atwell remains in the lead role. Pilots are always hard, especially with television shows that have a lot of moving parts to set up. But with an appealing heroine at the center and plenty of potential to be mined from the time period, if Agent Carter keeps its leads front and center and plays up the old school spy/sci-fi intrigue (and maybe hire a better cinematographer), then it can establish itself as a worthwhile addition to the Marvel world.

Movie Review: The Interview (2014)

The Interview (2014)

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on December 27, 2014

Is it worth it to make a movie that will anger one of the more dangerous world leaders out there? Is the movie even good enough to justify all the trouble it caused leading up to its eventual yet warped release? Whatever the answers are to those questions, The Interview has finally been made available to the American public for anyone who wishes to see it, and that’s the most important thing. Whether you decide to watch the new Seth Rogen and James Franco collaboration through video on demand or the few theaters that decided to play the movie, know that The Interview may not represent a low point for the duo, but it also doesn’t reach the madcap delights of last year’s This is the End.

If you haven’t seen the trailers then surely you’ve already heard of the premise through the national news: Franco and Rogen run a fluff celebrity talk show and are asked to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by the C.I.A. after he grants them an interview opportunity. Before making its way across the Pacific, The Interview establishes itself as a light skewering of the media. Satirical jabs at the news and “what the people want” carry the story through its initial setup without cutting too deep at their subjects, and the movie eventually shifts gears to full-on farce once the C.I.A. enters the picture.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a larger emphasis on scripted humor than on the improv work that usually characterizes Rogen and co-writer/director Evan Goldberg’s other movies. There’s a rather large amount of time spent on setups for future punchlines; it’s just too bad that many of these setups aren’t as strong as what they eventually build to, leaving the movie feeling lopsided. Thankfully things pick up once the plot arrives at Kim Jong-un’s forest stronghold. While Franco and Rogen’s comic chemistry is certainly palpable, it’s when Franco’s dimwit character Dave Skylark bonds with Kim that the movie finds its footing.

If nothing else, Randall Park just about steals the entire movie once he makes his entrance as the Supreme Leader. He finds pathos and humanity within the mad man, and Kim’s interactions with Skylark recall that of a fan awkwardly meeting a celebrity they admire greatly. The shadow of his late father hangs over the character, who feels like he has big shoes to fill as everyone looks to him for leadership at such a young age. Creating a more layered villain out of a real-life person who could easily be played broad and one-dimensionally crazed is among the movie’s unexpected pleasures.

Despite the scattershot nature of the overall movie, there are more than a few laugh-out- loud scenes that stand out. Unfortunately, a lot of the movie’s funnier lines were spoiled in the trailers, but one of those scenes that still manages to hit is the missile-up-the-butt scene, notably because Franco, Rogen, and (underused) costar Lizzy Caplan really sell their interactions/reactions. And once the titular interview eventually approaches, Rogen and Goldberg ramp it up to such absurdist extremes that it’s hard not to be pulled into the over-the-top farce of it all.

The concluding half hour moves with a swiftness and energy that the rest of The Interview could have used more of. Franco in particular gets plenty of time to riff out his lines in the early going to tiring effect, exaggerating Skylark’s idiocy to the point of annoyance. There’s a forced quality to his performance that often mirrors the film it’s a part of: spraying buckshot in multiple directions where a more focused approach would have served better. The Interview often hits its targets and his them hard, figuratively and literally, but it almost just as often ends up shooting at air.

Battlestar Galactica 10 Years Later

Battlestar Galactica 10 Years Later

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on December 8, 2014

Note: Yes, I’m aware that this piece is over a month late from the real anniversary. Yes, the show technically started with the miniseries in 2003. No, I don’t care, because I couldn’t resist the chance to write about this wonderful series.

The Sopranos. Breaking Bad. The Wire. Mad Men. Lost. These five shows are frequently recurring talking points in the conversation about our “Golden Age of Television” in the new millennium for various reasons. Whether it is for Breaking Bad’s lead performance, The Sopranos’ impact on television, or Lost’s science fiction elusiveness, these shows have remained in the zeitgeist to varying degrees. It’s that last one that springs to my mind, because the same year that gave us Lost also brought the premiere of another sci-fi series: the Battlestar Galactica remake. Yet for whatever reason Battlestar never caught the same degree of cultural attention that Lost got when it deserved to receive just as much and even more.

The miniseries began the story on a high note the year before, but it was the 2004 series proper premiere, “33,” that really showed what creator Ronald D. Moore (he of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and currently Outlander) and his crew were capable of. While the original Galactica show from Glen A. Larson (who recently passed away on November 14. RIP) was mostly content with aping Star Wars, Moore took the basic premise of Larson’s creation and reimagined it with severely flawed characters and gritty realism, as well as a heavy helping of social commentary. “33” finds its characters exhausted and on the run from the Cylons, a race of robots that rebelled against the humans and nuked their home planet Caprica in the miniseries, leaving only the Galactica ship to stand against the relentless threat.

With episodes such as this and many others, the writers were willing to push this band of soldiers to the edge of their abilities and unafraid to take them to many psychologically uncomfortable places. Well-loved characters like Starbuck and General Adama delved into morally murky waters while generally unlikable ones such as Colonel Tigh and Gaius Baltar pulled off heroic feats. Sympathies were ever evolving and sometimes it only took an episode or two to change your opinion on a character, and never was this more apparent than in Gaius Baltar, arguably the most fascinating character in a show full of them (and some not so, like Helo and Anders). His slippery ways make the role an incredibly difficult one to get a read on, and although Katee Sackhoff and Edward James Olmos are more frequently lauded for their performances, it’s James Callis’ work that stands out as the most multi-layered in the grand scheme of things.

It helps that Baltar is often at the root of many of the show’s big storylines such as the nuclear holocaust that begins the story, as well as New Caprica and the ensuing trial. On top of the gripping storytelling that fused action with character development, Moore and his writers continued the science fiction tradition of rooting these stories in an allegory that reflects the state of our world. More than any other show on television in the last decade, Galactica is a work of entertainment that is as much based in science fiction as it is in post-9/11 America. With the planet Caprica standing in place for the World Trade Center, the show dives headlong into the xenophobia towards Cylons as well as the fear of sleeper agents. The enemy could be one of our closest friends and we wouldn’t know it until it was too late. Teasing out the hidden Cylon identities meant that the underlying tension of the show rarely subsided as we waited for the next one to “snap” and see the repercussions ripple throughout the story.

This didn’t shield the show and its creators from criticism over the direction of their vision. Among the more common points made by detractors was that the writers were essentially making it all up as they went along (what show isn’t?) and that certain developments weren’t well thought out in regards to prior events. Never did this argument become more prolific than with the three-part finale “Daybreak,” which remains among the more controversial and debated television finales to this day. There’s no middle ground when it came to audience reactions; either it was brilliant and altered how we view the series or it was a lousy copout that made the series look worse in retrospect.

IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SHOW YET THEN DO SO AT THE FASTEST NOTICE BECAUSE MAJOR SPOILERS ARE TO FOLLOW

As someone who didn’t get to watch the show during its original broadcast and instead caught up with it on Netflix years later, I fall decidedly into the former camp. Viewing the show (or any show for that matter) through streaming is a decidedly different experience than spacing it out over weeks and years. Many ideas/themes that a show explores can become highlighted by back-to-back viewing, and one angle that caught my attention while watching Battlestar was the religious component woven into the plot and character ideologies. Over the course of its four seasons, Battlestar proved to be one of the few times where I encountered science fiction and religious themes coalescing together in harmony. The end game reveal that God really exists and has been nudging the pieces along rubbed many the wrong way, but for myself it actually strengthened the overall intent of the show.

Religion doesn’t often mesh well with science fiction because of its more fantastical qualities that go against scientific fact. But Battlestar Galactica never passed itself off as “hard” science fiction. In spite of its emphasis on realism (relatively speaking, given the killer robots), the show had always been more concerned with how an idea feels rather than how it works. To draw a comparison to Star Wars, the Force was much more mysterious and thought provoking as an energy force “that binds the galaxy together” rather than as midichlorians in the blood stream. Incurring divine intervention to bring our heroes to (our) Earth ultimately allowed Moore and his writers to make their most biting comment on humanity their last.

Both the humans and Cylons are inherently doomed races. The show’s propulsive yet grim tone sets this straight, where both sides rarely catch a clean break, usually because of their own faults. But the higher God of this universe, finding a messenger in Starbuck, finds forgiveness and gives (mostly) everyone a second chance to find peace on the new Earth. The story then takes an unexpected leap forward into the present time, revealing that this entire story took place hundreds of thousands of years ago. The concluding newsreel footage of real world robotic advancements makes the ultimate sobering point: humanity is doomed to repeat the past even as it seemingly moves forward. Fittingly, the last characters we see are the angelic forms of Caprica Six and Baltar, the two people who set the Galactica crew’s story in motion.

The wonders of this finale are in its ability to merge all of these threads together in a way that emphasizes their impact on each other. It manages to give the characters that we’ve grown deeply attached to through pain and heartbreak a well-deserved happy ending while still reflecting the darkness of our modern society. And it also manages to make that pointedly dark commentary through the combination of science fiction and religious themes that interwove and pushed against each other for four seasons and a miniseries. Whether Moore planned this conclusion from the beginning or not is irrelevant. Despite some hazy plot points, few shows were as thrilling, provocative, and compulsively watchable from moment to moment as Battlestar Galactica was. So say we all, ten years later.

Movie Review: Following (1998)

Following (1998)

 Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on November 10, 2014

Once you reach the stars, perhaps it’s time to make a return trip to Earth. Writer/director Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated new film Interstellar has been described as his grandest and most ambitious work yet (if not necessarily his best), and this inspired me to revisit his very first film: Following. Far from the $150 million plus budgets of his blockbuster work, Following was made on a peanuts budget of only $6,000 (even less than the many cheap found footage horror movies), but it already lays the groundwork for the common thematic material and stylistic touches that Nolan continues to explore to this day.

The film is about a young man (who goes by multiple names) who is intrigued by the lives of strangers to the point where he’s willing to follow them around all day and become invested in their daily routines. One day the stranger he is following notices and confronts him about it. This man, named Cobb (a name that would be repurposed for Leonardo DiCaprio in Nolan’s own Inception), is a burglar who brings the protagonist along on break-ins and eventually seduces him into the lifestyle of a career criminal. In the guise of his new identity, the young man soon begins a relationship with a woman whose house he broke into, and that’s when everything begins to unravel around him.

 

Of Nolan’s later films, Following most closely resembles his breakout hit Memento in its affinity for film noir tropes as well as the psychological uncertainty of its characters’ motivations. The Young Man falls in line with many of Nolan’s obsessive protagonists, and his striving to live through others who have more than him provides a real character-based reason for the familiar “ordinary man sucked into a life of crime” story. As it becomes apparent, though, not everything is as it seems, and each character keeps their motivations close to the chest.

With many filmmakers working on low resources, their first films can feel like rough sketches of ideas that would be more fully explored in their later works, but with Following it’s clear that Nolan already had a clear picture of the kind of story he wanted to tell. Apart from missing cinematographer Wally Pfister, whose crisp and sterile imagery, in contrast to the grainy black and white looseness of this debut, would define each of the director’s films from Memento and on, Following works as more than just a cinematic curiosity.

With frequent early collaborator David Julyan handling music duties (whose minimalist work is a refreshing, far cry from the Hans Zimmer bombast found in the Batman films and Inception), Nolan pulls a Robert Rodriguez by controlling most production duties but with much more success in executing his intentions. Rodriguez’ super low budget debut El Mariachi is an obvious comparison on multiple fronts, including the feeling of creative freedom and discovery as we see a budding filmmaker find his groove. Nolan fans that prefer his more grounded output like Memento and especially The Prestige will greatly appreciate the use of non-linear story structure and plot twists rooted in character work.

It’s these qualities that show how Following isn’t just an anomaly or a prelude for what was to come in the director’s career, and was even deemed worthy of a recent Criterion Blu-ray restoration. Fans of Christopher Nolan’s work will greatly appreciate the recurring themes and visual touches that would materialize later on. Meanwhile, neophytes will also enjoy seeing a filmmaker utilize their limited resources to their advantage in creative ways, much like other filmmakers such as Darren Aronofsky and Sam Raimi did with their first films, Pi and The Evil Dead, respectively. And if you thought Memento was Christopher Nolan’s calling card, then it’s time to correct this by seeking out Following in the near future.

TV Review: Boardwalk Empire (5×08) – “Eldorado”

TV Review: Boardwalk Empire (5×08) – “Eldorado”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on October 27, 2014

In spite of the numerous colorful characters that have popped up on Boardwalk Empire and evolved over the years (and then died brutal deaths, usually), this Prohibition gangster story has always been about Nucky Thompson. Even when the show digressed into subplots and pushed the Atlantic City bootlegger aside to make room for others, he has always hung around the sidelines shifting them to fit his needs or the needs of others on his side. Now, five years after Boardwalk Empire premiered on HBO and ten years after the show’s timeline began, Nucky Thompson’s story draws to a close in the series finale “Eldorado.”

But “Eldorado” is the end of the line for others, too, especially for Al Capone and his little tax troubles. Until the final minutes, this finale is a mostly quiet farewell for these characters, taking its time to wind things down. This is especially true for Al, who gets to have a scene alone with his deaf son to say his goodbyes. The interaction is not entirely successful at the resonance that it strives for, given that the son has been almost entirely absent from the show for a long time, so this “payoff” doesn’t feel truly earned. However, Stephen Graham’s performance dials back the grandstanding to such a degree that it reveals Al’s rare tender side, adding one last sliver of dimension to the legendary figure before his court time.

Even Margaret Thompson, no one’s favorite character, gets to go out on her own terms as she makes some more money for her husband and a concerned Joe Kennedy, who unsuccessfully asks her on a date. For a character whose primary function has mostly been to play the doting wife, Margaret’s shown a remarkable amount of agency for herself in what little time she has had in this truncated season. She’s certainly achieved more than poor Gillian has, though we’ll get to her in a moment.

With their grudge against Nucky mostly settled, the Lansky/Luciano double team set their sights on tying up other loose ends. After dispatching two assassins to take out Valentin Narcisse in a public showing (RIP), the head honchos contemplate about their futures, which have them laying the groundwork for the organized crime tree that would spring up in the coming years. Meanwhile, Eli doesn’t have nearly as much to show for. Disowned from his family and living in a crappy tenement, it will be a long time before the younger Thompson brother can pick himself back up, although the bag of cash and a shaving razor (a subtle little bit of humor for the increasingly disheveled Eli) left by Nucky will surely help things out.

As I said earlier though, “Eldorado” is Nucky’s time, both Nuckys in fact. Following last week’s advancements, the young Nucky storyline finally caught a second wind and justified its existence even with the spinning it took to get to this point. Talking about them separately wouldn’t do them justice, since the fates of Marc Pickering and Steve Buscemi’s incarnations of this character are intertwined thematically and literally. Contrary to what I thought in last week’s penultimate episode, Gillian’s letter to Nucky does not lead him on a path of redemption for the life-shattering choice he made by giving her over to the Commodore.

They have a reunion, but it’s clear that Gillian is pretty much beyond salvation, drained of most consciousness by the terrible asylum conditions she lives in. Instead, the choice that led him down the dark path is also, in a far-reaching sense, the choice that ultimately kills him. Young Nucky’s strive to climb the social status ladder and old Nucky’s attempts to fix all his problems with money have been his major weaknesses, as boy Joe points out on the titular boardwalk. Joe, as some fans predicted, is actually Tommy Darmody coming to avenge the fates of his father and grandmother.

In a marvelously inspired piece of editing that ranks among the most memorable sequences this series has pulled off, the episode cuts between young Nucky extending his “helpful” hand to Gillian and Tommy executing vengeance on the man who sent Gillian on her tortured path. Nucky Thompson’s end recalls Walter White’s in the meth lab, with him slumped on the boardwalk he used to rule over with a bullet in his face due to his past transgressions. Boardwalk Empire may never have been the most even show around when it came to moving its pieces along, but when it saw an endpoint in sight it dived forward with gusto to nail those payoffs, and the series finale “Eldorado” was no different.

TV Review: Boardwalk Empire (5×07) – “Friendless Child”

TV Review: Boardwalk Empire (5×07) – “Friendless Child”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on October 20, 2014

Playing the long game in TV storytelling is tricky business. The general principle is that patience pays off eventually, but that doesn’t mean that the build-up to the payoff shouldn’t be involving too. Boardwalk Empire often walks that fine line, and the end results usually but don’t always justify the water-treading. In the case of season five, Nucky’s flashbacks and Gillian’s asylum stay have been the odd ducks of this year’s storylines. And while I stand by what I’ve written about them in previous reviews, last night’s “Friendless Child” finally provided them with the dramatic weight that’s mostly been missing.

With the young Gillian now staying at the Thompson household after being caught by Deputy Nucky last week, Nucky and Mabel must decide on what to do with the child. Nucky would rather send her back to the Trenton orphanage where she came from, much to Mabel’s chagrin. Fleshing out Gillian with this back-story and her relationship with Nucky long before the events of season one turns out to be much more engaging than Nucky bumbling around as a kid in the early going.

 

It also provides a thematic connection with Gillian’s current situation in 1931. The show is clearly drawing a parallel between the harshness of her younger years and now at the asylum. Knowing that Nucky will eventually give her over to the commodore, present day Gillian’s plea letter to Nucky for help draws a clearer arc of redemption for our protagonist. The decision that ultimately set him on the dark path will eventually (presumably?) lead towards his last move.

Prior to that, though, the gangland war between him and the Luciano/Lansky/Torrio team had been raging on between now and last week’s “Devil You Know,” which is cannily explained in a radio news show condemning the criminal menaces terrorizing the streets. I can’t help but feel that this was an instance where the shortened season order forced show creator Terrence Winter and his writing team to nip and tuck their plotlines. It feels like an entire episode devoted to the conflict is missing, and to jump from Mickey’s “To war!” moment to basically the end of it all with everyone sorting things out deflates the tension, even with Mickey biting the bullet.

However, placing Nucky on desperate terms with his men constantly dying in battle does allow Steve Buscemi the chance to break out of his character’s terse but laid back composure. He’s breaking down and he knows that the only way to end this well is to strike a deal with his adversaries by giving up everything to them. Even if it means getting on his knees and allowing the two to walk all over him, Nucky’s will to drop it all right then and there.

 

This is especially important to him given that Lucky and Meyer took Will Thompson hostage after Nucky’s men took one of their own. The timing couldn’t have been worse as Eli, fresh off the Chicago train with flies in tow and looking worse for wear, tentatively reunites with his son on the street after so many years apart. The dichotomy between the pair’s life paths couldn’t be more apparent than from Will’s well-groomed suit and Eli’s rumpled and dirty mess of an outfit. Like Nucky, Eli has been pushed to the brink, and he too wants to just set things right.

When Lucky’s gang gets trigger happy at the hostage exchange, the simultaneous rage and terror on Shea Whigham’s face truly shows how Eli will do anything to hang onto the one good thing left in his life. This would include offing Don Maranzano with a goon squad in a hit scene that strongly recalls the murder of Julius Caesar. Whether that connection was intentional or not is hard to tell, but it does allow the Don to go out in grand fashion. Everyone’s on their way out in some way, shape, or form, and come next week’s series finale, it seems like the Capone empire is about to crumble too, if Mike D’Angelo gets his way.

Movie Review: Fury (2014)

Fury (2014)

 Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on October 17, 2014

War is hell. Anyone who has seen a number of war films can surmise this. It’s the basic backbone of almost every war film not starring John Wayne or Captain America, and by this point you would think that we have learned that enough by now. But writer/director David Ayer, probably tired of writing L.A. cops for most of his career, thinks otherwise. With Fury, his second 2014 film after the risible Sabotage, Ayer doesn’t just think that we need to see more World War II soldiers diving into the muck. He wants to rub it in our faces until we’re left beaten and bruised afterwards. Also: bored from exhaustion.

Fury follows the crew of the titular Sherman tank as they ride through Germany in the last months of the war. Hitler and the Nazis are desperate enough to use every last strategy possible, including forcing women and children into the fray, and the Allies continue treading through the battered country in the face of superior firepower. One of Fury’s crew members has been killed in battle, so now they’re stuck with a young replacement barely out of grade school who hasn’t seen a day of combat experience.

 

Fury eschews a goal-oriented story in favor of observing these rough-hewn men jumping from battle to battle, where their only objective is to kill Nazis and survive by the skin of their teeth. If there’s something that can be commended about the characters, who are as thin as they come without playing into easy stereotypes, it’s that the film doesn’t shy away from showing the Americans look just as brutal in their tactics as the Nazis were. In one particularly uncomfortable scene, Brad Pitt’s “Wardaddy” breaks in Logan Lerman’s Norman by forcing the boy to shoot a surrendered German soldier in the back.

“Wardaddy,” who is willing to win at any cost, walks a line between immoral and heroic in Pitt’s hands, which is more than can be said for the rest of the tank crew, wasting actors Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead), Michael Peña (End of Watch), and a better-than-average Shia LaBeouf in one-dimensionally unlikable roles. Lerman, like most of his performances, is serviceable as the audience avatar without making too much of an impression. It’s hard to care about most of these people when Ayer seems to care more about how many ways he can turn the human body into mince meat.

Watching Fury is like watching Saving Private Ryan edited down to its bare violent scenes, and to his credit Ayer conjures up a couple of tank battles that rival the intense standoffs of Spielberg’s film. The three-on-one game of chicken is the highlight set piece, as the Americans have to outmaneuver the much stronger German tank in close quarters. Small details like the whistle of tank shells and the teamwork tactics employed show off the minutia of war that isn’t often seen in movies.

But the unrelentingly dark tone eventually becomes so overbearing that the violence soon enough turns from shocking to tiring. Without more engaging characters or worthwhile thematic weight, the relentlessness of it all turns the film into a one-note gore show. Steven Price’s overwrought score doesn’t help matters, especially in an “unexpected” death scene that can be predicted the moment you meet these characters. Subtlety isn’t in Ayer’s playbook, and his script works better when it’s focusing on the Pitt/Lerman dynamic or the life-and-death struggle of surviving against all odds rather than the atrocities of war. But at least it’s better than Sabotage.