babyaardvark-14565
The writing is really bad. I'm not talking about the plot, but the dialogue lacks both finesse and sometimes seems like it's been translated badly from another language into English. Take these two gems:
DUPONT to SPERLING: "You know the root of the word "annihilate"? It's Latin. It means "to reduce to nothing". Ok, first, I'm pretty sure a US Senator knows what annihilate means why are they explaining to the audience?, second, it's derived from annihilare meaning "reduce to nothing", but the ROOT of annihilate is nihil, meaning "nothing". It's so awkward and clunky!! The playback in the courtroom makes it more effective but the dialogue is so dis-believable.SLOANE: "It rewards rats who are willing to sell out their country to keep their noses in the trough. Make no mistake, these rats are the real parasites on American democracy." The expression is pigs at the trough, and rats are vermin not parasites.I like Jessica Chastain, I think the lengthy dialogues and monologues killed her, she gets the timing breathing and emphasis in her phrasing wrong all the time, from the very beginning of the movie. It was distracting. The accents are bad, Lacy as a Southerner is painful, and is Connors supposed to be from Boston? Why do they even NEED accents??There is so much exposition and over explaining to the audience, there is so little nuance or deftness.In the end I didn't care about any of the characters, I didn't care whether the bill passed or was defeated. I didn't care if she went to jail or not. I had zero investment.I guess the surprise ending is satisfying, if also clunky, but I barely made it through.
micahburnett
The payoff that would have made the movie decent was too predictable, it was telegraphed from the beginning.The weak gun control arguments were predictably treated as strong, and the opposition's arguments were, of course, very weak, making this a propaganda piece, rather than a legitimate work of art.The most interesting part to watch movie was Sloane's career mindedness, trumping all else and the implications of that choice, but that alone, was not enough to make it good.
