Reviews

Though the wikipedia and imdb page state it's a US-UK production, the credits actually show Canadian funding, and that might be a clue as to why this is so very so bad. Blame Canada!

Literally THE only character of any remote likeability is Billy the engineer. All other characters, and I mean all of them, are the dredges of humanity.

-The ship's owner is just straight up disgusting.

-His Asian sidekick might have been funny, given better material.

-The Captain, beyond pretending to be the captain, pretends to be human, and fails.

The Mission Control lady simply is not written as Mission Control, at all, a complete idiot, she certainly didn't go to school past age 7.

-The Captain has two "love" interests, but there's no "love" there, at all.

-The Head of customer relations behaves like a mix of a first year psychology student and Oprah Winfrey

Then there are the rest of the travellers, each and every one of them more disgusting humans than the other. I'm reminded remotely of the Scandinavian dark satire Triangle of Sadness, also meant to be "fun, let's laugh at the evil filthy rich", but first, such material needs to be funny, at least to some degree. Satire operates on funniness. I in theory LOVE laughing at the evil ways of filthy rich, but it still needs to be funny.

Maybe we've reached a point in society where the people writing the entertainment all live in such silos that they laugh at their own faeces, even though it's not funny, smelling their own farts I guess.

This show should not have been renewed for a second season, why it did is unimaginable. Seeing it ended after two seasons, I stuck with it, just in case the writers gave us a decent ending to close this mess. But they didn't. They should have let the missile hit the half of the ship with the fewest people, just for the sake of satire. Instead they ended with the cheapest optical illusion, Billy and the Cap, standing far from the rock, to make it look big.

The whole thing could have been written by kids in grade 2. It is that bad.

This film is based on a novel. That that novel was written by a male in 1967 in the style of Harlequin Romances and Louis Lamours is one thing. That a supposedly "feminist" filmmaker would adapt that novel to this absolutely terrible movie is beyond understanding.

Though I haven't read the book, the many book reviews I've read since make me think the film script is not very faithful to the book. It's 2021, and to use "Look-How-Homophobic-These-Yesteryear-Cowboys-Were" rings empty and virtue-signally. If Campion was actually interested in telling a story of homophobic-closet-homoerotica, she could have more relevantly chosen a contemporary story of closet homosexuals in modern cowboy country. It just seems facile to manipulate a novel that may have had some relevance in 1967, the whole writing style of the story is very passé.

I'd not heard of the movie, but chose to watch it based on Campion's history and Cumberbatch's great acting talents. But I am sorely disappointed. Cumberbatch couldn't breathe any life into this stale script and the other two lead actors are their usual unconvincing selves.

There are also failings at the production level. The total condoning of bullying behaviour, and of animal abuse, does not serve the narrative in the least. The filming of Montana in New Zealand is an utter failure. The costume choices, specially for Cumberbatch, were farcical. And sadly, as great an actor as Cumberbatch is, he really can not pull off the turn of last century American West accent and demeanour.

Finally, as in some great insipid lack of vision, the film ends with an illogical untimely death, tweaked with hints of wrong-doing, a misdirect seemingly created to add a little spice at the end. One must also wonder at the misleading marketing/synopsis/plot. This is not a film about two opposite personality brothers, it's about one broken man, and the negative he shoves onto all the world (people and animals) around him.

Is this what the future of feminist film making looks like?

Some will note that many reviewers here are confused about the switch from nasty to mentorship in the last third of the film. I think it's because many missed the closet-homosexuality that drives this. Phil was in love with the Bronc, the Bronc died, leaving Phil hurt and angry, comes a nubile second closet-homosexual, of course this was to be the outcome. This is mostly laid out by Phil in the latter portion of the film. Closet homophobia is the true driver of this film, but a lot of viewers missed it.

Surprised at the low ranking of a fabulous show, I read all the negative reviews. They only watched the pilot! To be sure, people who write reviews about pilots have no business writing reviews. A great many of those negative pilot-only viewers complained of another woke show. But had they actually watched the entire series, they would have seen that the ex white nationalist is a hero, and the black team member betrayed the team. The trouble with people who only watch a pilot is they have not a clue.

The show is close to fantastic. The intellectual action is taut, as is the physical action, the relationships between the characters are complex and not campy. The dialogue is dry and uncompromising. A couple of the recurring characters are pretty useless, and the photography is probably the worse feature. But the entire show is meant to look gray and bleak, as things were in Equilibrium. This show is also not like POI, it's not about some hero people looking to use AI to save situations, which is more akin to Minority Report, NO, this show is about beating the AI, which of course is impossible. Once Pandora's Box has been opened, specially if it was opened slowly through decades, it cannot be closed intentionally, for now the bureaucrats are intertwined with the AI, only a catastrophic unintentional event can truly reset the clock. But as with all authoritarian forces in society, the Résistance is key. And if 2020 is any indication of willingness to resist in society, we are truly doomed to repeat the past. Don't bother with the negative reviews, they only watched the pilot.

It's not that the characters are not "sympathetic" as some reviewers have stated, it's that they don't exist, there is no character development whatsoever, just a bunch of hustlers hustling each other. It's no different than any hustled hustler movie out there. It watches like a Russian B movie. The script has no flair to it, the writing is completely flat, weasel words and cussing, a 12 year old failing teen could have written these dialogues. As for the acting, Sandler is not doing drama, he's doing the exact same loudmouth he does in most of his low ball films. The only good part of the film is the ending, he and his hustler brother are shot, it's what they deserved. No pity.

I've generally liked Spike Lee films over the years. I had high expectations or this one, given the awards. Many negative reviews have already covered issues of pacing and writing and editing, which I generally agree with. As a person who's been an anti-racism activist my entire life, I felt this film was heavy handed and propagandist. If a woke person can feel this is heavy handed, imagine how those not on board with the topic can be totally feel propagandised, how futile is it in regards to effectiveness at creating social change? On the point of marketing, speaking points, and the ridiculous opening line about being based on a true story. So many reviews here state their amazement and how impressed they are at a Jewish person and a black person working together like this. This is a lie, there is no Jewish partner in the book, it is completely fictionalised. Furthermore, confounding race issues with religious issues is truly a non starter. But most of the film is fictionalised. The majority of the book is about his undercover work AGAINST black activists, which he spent over three years on. Given the actual facts as laid out in the book, this film really goes down in ratings. The false marketing is the saddest statement about our society. When people are more interested in virtue-signalling than the truth. Had the production values been better, at least it might have been enjoyable as a stand alone, without the pretence of being based on the book, but I kept falling asleep, idiot conversations droned on endlessly and completely took me out of the film. So it's a fail both on production values and TRUTH. The high rating says a lot about how important virtue-signalling has become in our society.