The whole show and flick of this swaying motion is no substance
A director cannot please everyone. The element of subjectivity is probably the most profound and exciting part of the filmmaking experience. Some are bound to like the film; others will not. However, there must be universal standards of objectivity that can determine a film's rating.
This is what Dwight Schrute from The Office suggests in the episode where Pam gets pregnant and is sad about her appearance. And they exist. By those standards, Netflix's new action movie Carter falls agonizingly short. Poor execution, an empty core, lack of organization and direction lead to its downfall. Ultimately, it's made for a certain type of audience that just enjoys keeping their brains at home and just wants to de-stress.
Whether Carter causes or alleviates stress is debatable, but first let's talk about the plot. John Woo plays the title character, who wakes up naked in bed surrounded by a special ops team. Carter has a mysterious cross on the back of his head and can't remember anything; not how he got there, his personality, or what happened last night.
The team demands to know the location of Professor Jung, who developed a groundbreaking cure for the DMZ virus that is sweeping the globe. Carter uploaded a video of him holding Jungu hostage. Suddenly, the phone rings from the closet in his jacket.
The phone explodes; so is the room, but Carter is able to escape with the help of the same voice in his ear.
Obviously something is up as he fights off hundreds of criminals and assassins to do what the voice tells him to do. From there, Carter becomes a manic chase story that pushes the boundaries of conventional filmmaking with familiar elements of exposition.
Surprisingly, most of the film takes place over the course of a single day, albeit within a story set against the backdrop of years of political turmoil and hostility between North and South Korea. Their rivalry has been the subject of many efforts to reveal more than meets the eye.
The way it manifests doesn't hold many surprises, but it does play a defining role in shaping Carter's background.
It's an important tool used for character development, while also providing the plot with enough tension to sustain the effort. Jung Byung-gil also cleverly uses the uncertainty of Carter's loyalty to place him in the middle of our judgment.
When his daughter joins the mission, Carter becomes emotionally vulnerable. We sympathize with a father who wants to save his daughter at all costs. This feeling is probably the most attractive feature of the pursuit. The Central Intelligence Agency also strictly dictates the final outcome. The tangent introduced midway through the film is very similar to Netflix's The Gray Man. With so much information and moving parts, Jung's job becomes even more difficult as he tries to tie it all together.
Even we as the audience have a hard time understanding the overused double and triple agent trope by Gil. Not knowing who belongs where is one thing. But to inject every person in the universe is completely stupid. There are so many shifts in priorities and shifts in focus that Carter the movie gets crazy after a while. The lack of clarity seems to push the film further away from becoming a coherent, substance-driven narrative. After finishing, one probably goes back in parts to fully understand what happened.
Drone Shots
The most annoying thing about it was the drone shots. Some shots are well served by using technique. It certainly allows you to handle these situations with ease. But what Carter does is pull back to make the movie look like a video game. There is no artistry or nuance in how the story is told.
Carter sticks to the label of being an action movie. There are so many people killed and washed away that those who enjoyed Hulu's The Princess last month will do well. For others, it's probably best to avoid Carter.
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