Saw it tonight and dear Welles, has Guy Ritchie gotten sloppy as fukk. So much terrible action direction, I don't think there was a single action scene that was even halfway watchable. It's weird because he does get the tone right even if the images are lost in the shoddy camerawork and overdone stylistic choices (did he really believe doing a five frame split screen of a bunch of shaky cam action shots was going to work?). There's a scene towards the end that in terms of atmosphere genuinely captured that legendary Get Carter intensity and yet it looked ugly as shyt. Like I said, it's just weird that a lot of the movie still sorta connects even though nothing on screen is working one bit, it's boggling my mind. Ritchie was very lazy with the narrative as well. So many of his 'trademarks' got reduced here to repetitive tropes and/or throwbacks to better scenes from his earlier work that it got obnoxious. Just more and more signs of his falling off.
Wasn't feeling the cast too much either. Hammer was alright but Cavill couldn't really find that right balance to portray the dry wit of his character with a bit of fun. Too often, he was just dry. Even more weirdly, I have nothing positive to say about Vikander whatsoever. Her poorly-written character certainly didn't help but shyt, it bothered me so much that nothing she did worked, like at all. The movie was in desperate need of ditching her altogether so there could be more one-on-one interaction between Hammer and Cavill who actually did have some decent chemistry and she was just stinking up the screen.
The soundtrack is killer though. I think that's the only aspect of the movie I can say fukking works from beginning to end. Hell, the score might even be the secret ingredient to why the movie still worked somewhat. The more I think about it the more I believe this movie would be impossible to sit through without it. Again, killer soundtrack.
