Reviews

Good: excellently directed - the film bowled along at a good pace and I never felt as though it was dragging. The acting was perfectly ok, and in fact I quite liked the 'bad cop' over acting of the chief security officer with his tough guy stares at everyone and unnecessary barks into his microphone. People have said Freddie H might have been miscast but I could live with that, he wasn't awful.

Bad - just too many plot holes. Everyone has pointed out the obvious flaw ie how did the bank get the treasure chests into the vault in the first lace. But there were so many others: If the bank knew an attack was coming, why no-one on the roof? Why point all the cameras at the football crowd rather than the bank itself? How stupid is that?

Why station no security goons outside the entrance to the vault? The whole place looked deserted when the 3 heist johnnies made their way through corridors, yet the place was supposed to be on high alert.

Prior to our genius whizzkid coming onto the scene, no one had worked out the secret of the vault, yet the whole 'scales' idea was obvious as soon as you looked at the underneath of it - had no one thought to check that before?

When the two escapees fled down a rope (where did that come from?) from a 3rd floor building, were there absolutely no security staff outside, guarding the entrance to the bank, who would have seen them sliding down a rope?

Why were the police not chasing after Freddie H after having got his face clearly on camera when in the water in the vault? Seems he got away scot free.

I could go on. But the thing that always annoys me most - and it is a shame because the film had been just about keeping above the thin ice until this point - is when characters do totally unrealistic things. So at the end they are in the vault an the scales start to unbalance as the freeze melts. They all know what this means. They have the coins. What do they do? Stand there and have an argument. Then our English spy gets a gun out and does the big reveal. Why then? Couldn't it wait? They all know they will die unless they get out of there damn quick, yet they don't. Lunacy! That kind of thing really frustrates me because it is just STUPID and would not have happened, so you feel cheated. It means the whole final scene is tainted by the knowledge that it was created by the director rather than being what could really have happened.

So good because it was an entertaining watch and well directed. Bad because of the plot holes and that final nonsense at the end.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - you can spend as much money as you want on a film but if the characters and the plot are not believable, I'm not going to call it a good film. Right from the start I was shocked at how bad this film was at even the basics. Other reviews have already mentioned the really obvious logic sinkholes like a Spitfire that turns into a glider, or 400,000 troops made to look like ten queues to a row of airport check-in desks. But it is the little things too. Here are just a few examples (of many) face-palm moments that happened continuously throughout the film:

• Soldiers walk through the deserted yet pristine (no war damage) town, the air full of leaflets but only in one 50 yard area. Why aren't they on the beach with all the others? Do they not know there could be Germans around?
• Instead of diving for cover when attacked the Brits run straight down the middle of the street so they can be gunned down. Then the one survivor leaps over a gate and stands behind it despite bullets raking through it. He then turns a corner to run off and the magic bullets manage to follow him.
• Our hero (!) goes to take a dump on the beach and only notices a chap 50 ft away once he is about to empty his bowels? Is he blind?
• Our hero goes to help bury the soldier by pushing a bit of sand over his hand (is that it?) and for this earns some water from the other guy. Yet the two do not even speak! Why not? Of course that is revealed right at the end. It was a plot device! Totally unrealistic.
• Our two heroes stand on the beach and some bombs drop. Soldiers keel over bloodlessly. When he gets up the fallen soldiers are not where they were before. Basic continuity error.
• The terrible, droning 'music' that was supposed to build tension plays all through the opening scenes of the two soldiers trying to sneak onto a boat, but when the cack-handed editing suddenly switches to a fishing village in Dorset, the music continues without pause even though it is totally unsuitable for what is a completely different scenario.
• Tom Hardy could have been anyone. He did no acting, and you only saw his face for about 10 seconds at the end. Complete waste. As for Kenneth Branagh, he just strode up and down a gangway and stared grimly at the skies the whole time. You don't need star actors to do that.

I could go on and on and list another 150 unrealistic actions if I could be bothered. All the way through the film, plot holes and 'why did they do that?' moments. Awful music, car-crash editing. It is such a shame because clearly a huge amount of effort had been put into the film, and some of the action scenes were very good. Trouble is, I recently watched '1917', which was a masterpiece in comparison, and captured the scale of the trenches and no man's land in a way that Dunkirk, without CGI, completely failed to do on the beaches.

I had high hopes for this film given the awards it has gathered and the reviews people have given it, but these were shot down in flames by the time I had finished watching it. Never in the field of human conflict have I been so disappointed.

How to ruin a good film: make your characters behave in a way that no normal human being would. Some of just many examples I could choose:

1. Mother rushes into to collect daughter who for no obvious reason hasn't escaped from the theatre with everyone else but hidden under a desk. Mum calls her name. She doesn't answer! Just stays there, silent. Ridiculous. She would be screaming 'mummy' and running into her arms. 2. Hero gets driven to the earthquake monitoring building by kindly Marit, having stupidly tried to get her to crash by going wrong way round a roundabout to save 1.5 seconds, just missing cars. Having argued with head honcho, he goes back to the car, gets his bag out, and walks off. Not even a word to poor Marit who is sitting there waiting for him. Rude or what! No one would behave like that. And where is he going? 3. Dumb daughter doesn't wait in car with Marit as instructed by Dad, but decides to escape and head up to the 34th floor (how did she know, she would not have had time to ask at reception) for no reason. Then when she sees everyone running out she decides instead to go and stand on the balcony and watch the earthquake coming. Duh. 4. Hero and Marit go into tunnel and through door to see where her father went. Because it is dark and there's some rumbling, hero starts panting and breathing deeply like he's just run 100m. He does this again every time there is a crisis eg in the lift. Heavy panting as he talks. Why? Just stupid. Note to director: this does not build tension, it just irritates viewers because NO ONE DOES THAT. 5. Marit and girl are found by hero in the bar on the sloping floor. They could easily have crawled up the slope through the bar and escaped, as indeed they all did at the end of the film. Although they didn't escape the way our hero came in, no they just sat there, waiting for the building to collapse. Stupid!!

I could go on. The first half of the film was dull, the earthquake scenes and the collapsing buildings were amazing (hence 4 stars) but the complete illogicality of everybody's actions, from start to finish, made me want to punch the screen. And that earthquake monitoring expert, was he a baddie or just incompetent? None of that made sense. And how did Kristian know that an earthquake was happening that second just by looking at Marit's phone where she had videos of rats, a video she had taken a while ago? The earthquake might have waited another 8 hours, then he would have looked silly.

In summary, a very annoying film worth watching only for the special effects at the end.

I think some reviewers have lost sight of the fact that this is a film. A fiction. It isn't real. So they are 'calling out' the sexism, the fantasy', the male patriarchy elements where a 'man' (ugh) wakes up a woman just because he wants company, and only after considerable agonising. Yes, he did the wrong thing, and he knew he had, but this was the whole point of this fictional film - it makes you think - what would I do in this dilemma? You can't give a film 1 star because you disagree with what one of the characters did. That is not how film reviews work. Otherwise The Shining would have universal 1 star reviews wouldn't it? Oh no, that's fine, because it is only violence, not sex.

It is also helpful whenever accusations of sexism are flung around to reverse the polarities and say ok, what if it was a woman waking up a man? You would not hear a peep out of any of the angry complainants and indeed they would probably give the film 10 stars. A woman empowers herself!

So instead of judging a film based on whether or not you agree with what the characters are doing (which is a stupid approach as then every horror or murder film would be instantly rubbish), let's look at it as an artistic endeavour. Yes, there were some minor plot holes, but this is sci-fi. From my perspective, the acting was great, the sets were magnificent, the directing was excellent, and the story made you think. I was certainly glued to it until the end, and it entertained me. Isn't that what films are supposed to do?

And if Chris Pratt had just carried on in the space ship on his own for the next 60 years chatting to Arthur that would have made for a boring film, wouldn't it?

I normally watch even bad films through to the end in case they either get better or are so bad they are good. however, I think this is the first film I have ever watched where after an hour and ten minutes I was so disinterested that I just gave up. This was not only because of the pace of the film, but also because there were just so many mistakes with the editing, the story, the character's behaviour, the timelines, plausibility - almost everything really. For example (in no particular order):

1. They are on a hunt, the stag they are chasing heads one way, then our hero decides to veer off to one side to enter a forest. Why? 'Don't do it!' cries a colleague. Why? Miraculously the stag seems to have magically appeared in this forest and evidently stands conveniently still rather than running off when he hears the horse coming, and so no sooner has Fawcett entered the forest than he is able to take a good shot at it and kill it. After this, he is feted as a hero by all and sundry. Again, why? None of it made sense. 2. Two horses with riders fall over as they chase the stag. Why? 3. Fawcett and his wife are lying next to each other talking in bed. She raises herself up and says something. Then the camera cuts to a different angle and suddenly she is sitting up half way down the bed. Clunky editing! 4. Fawcett first meets Henry Costin on the ship, but only after, for no reason at all, Costin stalks him on the boat and Fawcett hides behind a door to catch him. Huh? And this after already being on the boat for a week? Huh? Both knew they would be working together so why not just say hello on day 1? Made no sense at all. 5. The raft manged to float upwater, no paddling required. 6. Random people appeared on the raft who were suddenly crew members. 7. One crew member randomly threatens our leader with a huge knife for no reason. He has the knife up against his throat. Camera cuts to another angle and now he is lunging from a distance, giving time for Costin to shoot him in the ear (huh?). Then we never see that man again. Made no sense. 8. Natives kill a disposable crew member with the first arrow. They then launch what seems like 100 arrows a minute at the raft and can't hit anybody. Fawcett stands there with his arms open and every arrow misses him, and all the other crew members too. He holds a book up to his face and an arrow then conveniently hits the book. He stays there, relying on their good nature not to hit him again. Has he got a death wish? That isn't bravery, it is stupidity. 9. They reach the source of the river, thousands of miles upstream, on what seems like Day 2 of their journey. It turns out to be a big waterfall. Did they not think that maybe the river carries on back from above the waterfall? 10. James Murray is supposed to have been Shackleton's 2nd in command but is fat, and in the jungle a complete wimp, unable to carry his pack without moaning it was too heavy. He then decides it is safer to run away rather than stay with his colleagues. All completely unrealistic. 11. At the scientific academy presentation, half the room seems to be jeering and mocking Fawcett's proposal that there were advanced civilisations in the jungle right up until the last minute, then he says one thing and they all, in unison, cheer wildly and throw their hats in the air. Huh? 12. In the jungle, Fawcett gets a letter from his wife advising he has had a son. First he gets Costin to read it because it would be too 'painful to read' (huh?), then he learns he has a son and barely reacts, then he take the letter and burns it in the fire. Why? 13. Half way down the river a crew member suddenly gets out some more letters from family and hands them round. Why not do this when the letters first arrived? 14. Fawcett gets back from his first trip and his son, who looks about 3 months older than when he left, now doesn't recognise him. 15. What was the point of the 'opera in the jungle' scene? Why did they bring fully costumed European opera singers to the jungle? 16. Fawcett appears to speak the language of everyone he encounters, including remote Amazon tribes people. Totally implausible. 17. His native assistant speaks Spanish but understands English perfectly but can't speak English. Why not? Fawcett understands English and can speak Spanish but only talks to him in English. Huh? 18. If you thought the trip to the source of the Amazon was quick, the trip back was so quick you didn't even see it. He turned away from the waterfall towards the raft then bingo, suddenly, he was in England. 19. At one point as Fawcett was pushing the raft to shore, a man in jeans leading a horse on the riverbank was clearly in shot for a good few seconds, right over his shoulder. Who was he? Where did the horse come from? If he wasn't supposed to be there how could the cameraman, director and editor all failed to have seen him, and what was he there for?

I could go on. There were just so many plausibility issues you could not enjoy the film as a narrative. I could also see that the film was so badly edited that the enjoyment was being sucked out of it. I couldn't see it through to the finish. My journey ended.

A key function of a film based in the real world is 'plausibility'. If the characters you are watching do things that don't make sense, it compromises and spoils your enjoyment of the film as you can't really believe it any more. 'Flight' falls firmly into this category. Here are some examples:

• Whip's toxicology report is successfully rescinded by his lawyer on the basis that the hospital blood and hair test process used out of date and unchecked processes. All the other crew members had their samples tested at the same time, so why were they not rescinded too? Why did no-one in that huge conference room full of intelligent people question that?

• John Goodman's drug dealer character is (somehow) brought in to rescue Whip from his drunken stupor on the morning of the inquest, and the two people looking after Whip just stand by and watch as large quantities of drugs are consumed without even questioning what this will do to their client. Any normal person would go 'Hey! Won't this make him even worse?' Not only that but they then unquestioningly give him the $500 he demands, just happening to have that much cash on them of course.

• Whip shows absolutely no ill effects from all that drinking and drug taking. Every morning he looks fit and healthy again without the enormous hangover you would expect. He swigs vodka as he drives yet his driving seems fine. He is the epitomy of prefessionalism as he crash-lands the plane. Not only does this not seem that plausible but it is also not a good message to be sending out.

• People like his attorney are trying to help Whip ensure he is not prosecuted. Yet he keeps turning on them, shouting and swearing at them even though all they are doing is assisting him. Why on earth would he do that? He is not even drunk at the time. Just doesn't make sense, why bite the hand that is feeding you? It's just stupid.

• Whip is asked the question: 'in your opinion, did the stewardess drink the vodka?'. Simple question. The subsequent not answering, mumbling, looking away, asking for the question to be repeated etc charade was just ridiculous, no-one would do that as it so obviously implies some form of guilt. Then, instead of just saying "I don't know" (simple!) he suddenly confesses for no reason. Completely implausible. You could also question why the question was asked in the first place as it wasn't going to prove anything but that got subsumed by the ridiculous response that had me screaming at the screen at how daft it all was. It completely ruined what for me was already not a good film. And just to get the usual saccharine Hollywood ending where he serves his time, goes dry, re-unites with his family, and no doubt lives happily ever after.

The film started well, but after the plane crashed it went down almost as fast and for me ended up as a bit of a smouldering wreckage. Frustrating.

When you watch a good movie you are absorbed in it, you believe in the characters and their actions, and not once do you have to think 'huh?' because the the plot makes no sense. Fallen ironically falls down on all these areas.

Plot holes abound. Why does the demon chase after Hobbes yet isn't able to jump into him, oh except at the end where the whole cliffhanger situation is made nonsensical because Hobbes now has to kill himself to prevent that happening? Why bother driving out to old man Milano's shack to discover the demon's name on a wall when he could have just asked his daughter who already knew all about it? Why... I could go on, but others have already covered this in their reviews.

What also bugged me though was the unrealistic actions of the characters:

• A normal person picking his way through a cobwebbed, shadowy old abandoned house in the woods would be scared witless, yet Hobbes just had an expression of mild curiosity all the way through, even when the conveniently frightening roof beam half fell down (because he took a book off it???) and should have scared the bejesus out of him.

• When talking to Gretta in a piazza, he doesn't just stand there talking to her as a normal person would do. No he has to dramatically stride back and forward, wandering around her while she stands still and talking loudly so everyone can hear despite the sensitive nature of the conversation. No-one does that!

• When his brother is killed, Hobbes tells the young boy that his Dad has died. Not only does the child somehow psychically anticipate the news ("he's not just asleep is he?") but then appears not to care when the death is confirmed. No tears, he just looks away with an expression of mild indifference. Completely unrealistic!

• Hobbes chases a possessed character up some steps onto a railway platform, but when he gets to the platform there is no-one there. Yet we then see that the possessed man is actually on the other side of the tracks, still observing Hobbes. How did he get there? The demon doesn't give humans super powers and this guy was clearly a little portly (I'm being generous) so couldn't have sprinted that fast.

• Why would the James Galdofino character be asking about Hobbes looking at a map, why was he suddenly so interested yet never followed this up?

• Why on earth would Hobbs throw his car keys into the forest when he reached the shack for the last time? Even if you weren't planning to come back, no-one would realistically do that, they would just die with the car keys still in their pocket, it was a completely pointless gesture done only for dramatic effect.

• Hobbes kills his best mate at work yet shows no emotion at all, not even a 'sorry old chum'. Bang, you're dead, now where are my suddenly poisonous cigarettes? He should have been torn up inside about having to do that, it should have been such a dramatic moment. Imagine if you had to kill your best friend, would you act as though you were just swatting a fly?

• If he was dying from the cigarettes (how did he 'lace' them?) why struggle to run away at the end? He didn't need to, what was the point of that? It just looked good for the cameras. Then having collapsed in the snow 100m away from the house, the camera went to an overhead shot showing him sprawled out just a few feet away from the car and the other bodies. That didn't make sense either.

Hmm, I'm mixing up character flaws with plot holes but to be honest the whole thing was a big mess as well. There was no real tension, the whole tag-you're-it demon transfer theory didn't work as well as it should, there was plenty of annoying mumbling so half the dialogue was inaudible, and the ending was completely unsatisfactory and left you thinking 'what was the point of that then?'.

Rarely have I enjoyed a film less, and by the end my face had fallen so maybe that's the logic behind the name of the film.

This film was made not east of Sudan but north of London I suspect. Pretty much all (if not all of) the action takes place on studios sets, although I have to say that some of them were quite realistic and must have taken a while to create. What were not realistic in the slightest were actors pretending to interact with the background 'stock footage' projections of wild African creatures; it reminded me of some of the early black and white monster films where big Plasticine models rampaged in the background whilst the humans in the front screamed and looked at the sky whilst running away. However, this sort of added to the enjoyment of the film because these scenes were so funny. Did the director really think the audience would be fooled and think the actors really were waving sticks 20ft in front of a herd of charging elephants? In terms of the acting, Anthony Quayle carried the film, Sylvia Sims played the 'haughty white woman in Africa' role as well as could be expected, and little Jenny Agutter with a strange haircut was one of the most attractive child actresses I have seen - I didn't realise it was her until the credits came up. Derek Fowlds didn't have a great part to play and of course every time you see him now you expect him to answer 'Yes, Minister?' whenever his character's name was called so it is a little offputting.

There were corny plot holes everywhere (eg why did Murchison seem happy for Baker to kiss Miss Woodville at the end when earlier he had professed that he loved her? How could a guard be killed by Baker just by reaching over from behind a rock and holding his head? How on earth could those Arab sailors, having traipsed for miles through the jungle after the English party, walk all round them as they crouched on the ground and not notice they were there, then just give up at that point and head back to the boat?) and contrivances just to try to string in some tension, but you could see everything coming a mile off. I felt I was the director myself at times, second-guessing how the film would continue using the cheapest option. Baker: "Shall we cross this river?". Looks a bit to the left. Cut to stock footage of crocodile sliding into a different river. Cut back to worried looking Baker: "Come on, best find another route!" Or words to that effect.

Still, despite the above, an entertaining way to spend a rainy afternoon if you have nothing better to do and like older films.