Reviews

I am one of the projectionists in the local small town cinema with only two or three shows per week. The end titles of a film is not only for crediting all people involved in the production, it is also a time to reflect and contemplate on what you experienced when watching the movie, and you can measure how touched people were by how long they stay during the end titles. When The Old Oak was the movie for the evening not a single one in the audience got up from their seats until the last line in the credits had passed, the screen had faded to black and the curtains closed. That is a mark of a very touching movie!

Of all the movies I have seen, and that is quite a few since I am a projectionist at a cinema, this must be one of the most pointless movies ever made. It is just the fist half of a story that is finished in the sequel movie, Arthur 3, but it could easily have been cut down to around 10 minutes and included in the next movie instead. There are so many pointless scenes and so little actually contributing to the story. At least it is only pointless and not outright agonisingly bad, which saves it from getting a 1* rating. I would recommend skipping this one and just watch the recap that the next movie starts with instead.

If you, like me, watch this hoping to see a Japanese "Das Boot" one of three things will happen:

1. You fail to realise that this is not a Japanese "Das Boot". You won't like the film and you will leave a 1-star rating.

2. You do realise that this is not a Japanese "Das Boot", but don't like what it in fact is. Ratings will range from "I didn't like this, and that's all that counts" 1-star ratings to good ratings of "while I didn't like this, I can appreciate the movie for {how it was made/story line/whatever}".

3. You do realise that this is not a war movie but in fact a science fiction drama in a world war II submarine setting, and that is something that you at least don't immediately dislike just because of that.

Once I came to terms with this being a science fiction-movie I actually started to enjoy it. I like the fictional story line as well as the science fiction parts of the movie and the movie feels very good made. If I watch it again starting with the right expectations it's even possible that the rating will go up another star.

I think that where the movie falls short when compared to other movies en large is just the mix of genre and setting. It's like the Caprica TV-series, said to be a Sci-Fi Dallas. While not a bad series in itself people who like Dallas doesn't necessarily like Sci-Fi and vice versa, and therefore the series gets a bad average rating. I can therefore understand the low average grade this movie gets despite that this movie actually is quite good.