tv and film

My siblings and parents thought there weren’t any good films on TV, so when I suggested that I could rent some DVD’s, they thought it was a great idea. This month we have seen:

• Defiance (2008)
• The Elite Squad/Tropa de Elite (2007)
• The Duchess (2008)
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
• The Warlords (2007)

Defiance is a different kind of film with World War II as it’s subject. It depicts the eastern front in Belarus and Jewish refugees hiding from the Germans in the forest, thus depicting a different aspect of WWII than what is commonly shown. I applaud the film for it’s originality in this regard. The struggle against the Germans is not the only difficulty, in the film the protagonist takes revenge on those who murdered his family, and eventually needs to take harsh measures to maintain his leadership, which are shocking events and difficult to live with. I wonder what I would have done in his place, and if the actions were necessary? Even if they were cruel, I think they were. Near the end of the film the group of refugees needs to escape, and is rewarded after a terrible sacrifice. I think the events in the end carried a meaning in a second, deeper layer, because the events mimicked the Exodus.

After seeing the 2002 Brazilian film City of God (Cidade de Deus), I was looking forward to The Elite Squad, another Brazilian film depicting the harsh life in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. The corruption depicted in this film goes so far that it’s baffling and amusing at the same time. City of God is a violent film, but this film even takes a step further. The officers of the special police force BOPE depicted in the film shoot first and ask questions later, they don’t mind gross torture either if it’s necessary. No doubt figures like Geert Wilders would love to have a police force like BOPE in The Netherlands to shoot football hooligans in the legs. I hope the extreme police brutality depicted in the film was at least slightly romanticized by the creators of the film. On the other hand, if in the Netherlands the regular police was an utterly corrupt mess and we had slums crawling with drug dealers, I’m not sure if I’d dislike the idea of having something similar to BOPE. What this film also shows is that the consumers of drugs are complicit in all kinds of misery in the production chain of drugs. They never see the suffering they’ve caused when they buy their drugs, and live with the illusion they have clean hands. They don’t realize they are in fact financing terrorism with their consumption because Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium and hashish in the world.

Because historical custome dramas are highly appreciated by my mother, I chose The Duchess. The Wikipedia article of Georgina Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, the protagonist of the film, doesn’t mention anything about the totally abusive nature of her relationship with William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire. I wonder if it’s romanticized? Of course the abuse is shocking. But it seems as if the abusive relationship serves as shock value to attract us to the film? I wonder how the relationship (as it happened in reality) would have been characterized by those living in the 18th century, instead of us from the 21st century? After all, I have the idea the film gives a very colored perspective, heavily influenced by feminism, on a person living in the 18th century. As a costume drama it succeeded without doubt, the 18th century scenery and clothes look amazing.

Probably no other film I’ve seen for quite some time has received as much praise as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The title seems cryptic, but it’s meaning will be revealed in the film and is quite fitting. A female student assisted by her roommate wants to have an illegal abortion performed in the final days of the Romanian communist regime. They expect it will be difficult, but they are proven to be naive when it becomes obvious that it will be a grueling endeavor. It is test of friendship. Memorable for me is the dinner scene the roommate attends, it shows a generation gap, but all the complaining done by the older generation is trivial compared to suffering the roommate has been put through at that moment.

I’m a fan of Jet Li’s work, of his more recent work I loved his films Unleashed (2005) and Fearless (2006). Of course Kiss of the Dragon (2001) deserves an honorable mention as well, but only for it’s well executed fight scenes. The film The Warlords is part of his recent work as well, but didn’t impress me as much as those other two. The relationship of the three brothers and Qingyun’s relationship with Liansheng could have been worked out better. This film definitely has an awesome, huge battle scene. While I wouldn’t object to it in Li’s other films, this a historical war film so the one-at a time attack rule of the Stormtrooper Effect which can be seen in this battle scene should be avoided. What I dislike most however is the dubbing of the film in English, and the absence of the option to use the Chinese audio track. This is ridiculous, because I don’t remember having rented any foreign language film in my DVD rental store which was dubbed. Films which I have discussed earlier such as Khadak and Ong Bak 2, which are respectively Mongolian and Thai language available at the DVD rental store, where dubbed. Whoever is distributing the film in Europe and decided it was good to dub it to English, shame on you, you destroyed the film. Please restrict the dubbed versions to elsewhere in Europe, in the Netherlands we’re smart enough to read subtitles.

Now that I was blogging about films anyway, I thought I’d mention my favorite older films, all of them from the black and white era. Sorted from oldest to youngest:

• Nosferatu (1922)
• The Great Dictator (1940)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• Casablanca (1942)
• Seven Samurai (1954)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

All of these are classics, and most are part of our cultural heritage. Sadly, only Nosferatu is part of the public domain. It can be seen here on the Internet Archive. Others are still copyrighted, for example Seven Samurai will enter the public domain in Japan in 2036, 38 years after the death of Kurosawa. I don’t want to see copyright abolished because investments do need to be protected of course, but it would be more healthy if it would expire as soon as the individual author dies in the case of individual authorship, and maybe 50 years in the case of corporate authorship. It’s a shame that politicians have so far only been increasing copyright terms, probably under the influence of a powerful industry lobby.

Concerning the films, I think they are all highly recommended. What makes them truly great is that they still impress in the 21st century, despite their age. The Great Dictator is incredibly hilarious, while I have a lot of appreciation for the quality of other films, The Great Dictator was the most fun to watch. It’s also special because it was produced at a time when the scale and intensity of the Nazis’ crimes were not fully known. Since watching this film I want to watch Charlie Chaplin’s other films.

During the summer vacation I’ve seen the following films in August:

• 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
• Che (2008)
• Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
• Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Once a popular genre a few decades ago, the Western genre hasn’t seen much activity in the film industry lately. I’m talking about the ‘authentic’ western films taking place in the 19th century, not the comedy, horror or contemporary westerns which have been popular with the film industry recently. 3:10 to Yuma is one of those films which fits in the former category, and it’s refreshing to see a modern western which has quality. Russell Crow and Christian Bale shine as the stars in this film. I loved it, but I disliked seeing the silly, incredible ending. I’d still recommend it though. Considering the scarcity of ‘authentic’ westerns films with quality in this decade, I’m looking forward to see two more westerns which were produced in this decade: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and The Proposition (2005). Wikipedia has a list of all of them, but most do not fall in the ‘authentic’ category, even though they’re good films, such as Brokeback Mountain.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a brilliant crime drama. Two brothers decide to rob a jewelry store, but due to coincidence their plan goes wrong. The rest of the film then depicts the increasing desperation of the brothers as the net tightens around them. I noticed this is one of the movies where they try to suppress the noise of a firearm with a pillow, I expected this to be another invention of Hollywood, but apparently it does have some effect in reducing noise.

Che is a biographical film about Che Guevara. If you’d judge the film by it’s length, you’d have to say you certainly get great value for money because you get both part 1 and 2 which contain over four hours of film. Before I watched this movie I had a negative view on Che as an ‘evil’ revolutionary socialist who helped to instate the current dictatorial regime in Cuba, but after seeing it I can empathize with him more. The truth is that Fulgencio Batista was more loathsome than the socialists who had overthrown him and had more consideration for the interest of the Cuban people. However, according to the criticism mentioned in the Wikipedia article we should be careful not to sympathize with Che too much.

Happy-Go-Lucky is a comedy-drama film. I had no idea how they made up the film’s title, but after looking the word up in a dictionary, I learned that happy-go-lucky is a term for a person who is ‘blithely unconcerned, carefree’. In that case the term is very appropriate for the title of this film. The protagonist of the film, Poppy, is exactly that, carefree. Her driving instructor is her polar opposite. During the film Poppy comes in contact with the negativity and suffering of the harsh real world. She learns to understand and live with the real world in the end, fortunately without losing the healthy dose of optimism. Normally I’m not into comedies, but this film is a hybrid between drama and comedy, and a bit slower paced as well. It had me laughing, but some other persons who usually appreciate comedy could not appreciate this film.

Slumdog Millionaire is an archetypal Romeo and Juliet story set in India, a truly enchanting film. From my perspective this was a great film, but for others this film ruffled some feathers. The criticism is that the film contains a great deal of stereotypes about India, which I agree with. If a foreigner made a film about a boy growing up in the Netherlands which featured (negative) portrayals of prostitution, drugs, same-sex marriage, clogs, windmills, the Party for Freedom all blended together and filled with stereotypes I’d feel my nation is being ridiculed, too. What offends me most however is the idea that Jamal becoming a millionaire is supposed to be destiny. As noted elsewhere, are the rest of the inhabitants of the slums destined to live in poverty then? Destiny is disgusting, let’s just call it good luck.

On another note, I watched The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor on tv. This is the best example of a film which relies solely on spectacle and special effects for success, because the film is lacking in all other departments. Nevertheless, it was fun to see. Jet Li is totally cool. Throw in all kinds of exaggerated elements in the story like the Terracotta Army, Yeti’s and make up that the super evil emperor built the Great Wall of China over the corpses of defeated soldiers so you have an excuse for a huge battle at the end. Fortunately all the spectacle eclipses the other aspects of the film, so you will continue watching despite being annoyed by the stupid script.

TV-series wise, RTL was so nice to start broadcasting the final season of 24 recently. Again they show two episodes on sunday evening, but this time at a later timeslot, so the last episode ends past 12 o’ clock PM. Like most people I need to get up early in the morning, so now I have to resort to the VCR. Again they’re broadcasting this long after the season finished in the USA and they’re forcing me to use my VCR, thus downgrading the quality. They still didn’t learn and make it tempting to resort to downloading the whole season over the Internet once again.

For those who have been living under a rock, Lost is a TV series which ran for six seasons from 2004 to 2010 about a group of survivors who are stranded on a tropical island. Last night I watched the final episode on Dutch TV. Having followed this series for years and having seen every episode I feel this series has become a part of my life. In a good way I’d like to add, because I think Lost was an awesome ride. I think it ranks among the best TV series I’ve seen.

What I like about Lost is that it has a character and quality which many other TV series lack. There wasn’t a single episode of Lost which I considered to be boring. That’s a different story with the various Star Trek TV series, also one of my favorites. Those series contain many episodes which suck because they are boring and lack a good story, while they also contain many good and a few outstanding episodes.

Lost is also a TV series which I’d call very deep. Deep in the sense of being a TV series with many and very complex story lines, with later episodes being increasingly dependent on early episodes for understanding the story. Contrast this with shallow TV series. Like the various TV series of the CSI franchise which use the crime of the week format heavily. In CSI the crime which needs to be investigated in every episode runs the show, meaning the story is very short term, structural story telling spanning multiple episodes and characters are inferior as story elements to the crimes being investigated. While this makes good television for persons who don’t follow a TV series regularly and want to be able to ‘hop on’ at every episode, it makes for boring and unintelligent TV in my opinion. Another popular crime series like The Mentalist isn’t as bad as CSI in this regard, with the first episode revealing that the protagonist is searching for the serial killer which offed his wife and child. I had the impression it would be an interesting series to follow, but was soon bored because it involved many episodes using primarily the crime of the week format, and very few (yet more than CSI) long term story development.

Where Lost also succeeded is keeping the story line credible, the later seasons were not of a lower quality than the early seasons. I think Prison Break obviously failed here big time for example. The first season started of great, the second season was reasonable, but by the third season it was no longer credible when Michael Scofield found himself returned to square one and by the fourth season I stopped watching. The writers working on Prison Break didn’t have a solid long term vision on the story, and overextended the story after the success of the first season. Maybe they did so to exploit the success of that series, which they should not have done if they couldn’t do it right. I think the same counts for Heroes, another show which couldn’t keep my attention.

I’ll keep spoilers to a very acceptable minimum in this post, but be warned that some of the links I posted might lead to spoilers. Today I’ve spent half a day reading the Lost wiki Lostpedia to make sense of the whole series. When I’ve got far too much time on my hands maybe I’ll get down to reading this analysis, but for those who are time challenged like me this interpretation of the series is a good read.

All those years of Lost gave rise to a lot of questions regarding the mysteries in the story. Some are still unresolved are the finale, for example the nature of the island, the numbers the electromagnetic phenomena, the lethal pregnancies, the sickness. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The writers argued that they weren’t interested in providing definitive answers to certain questions, because providing answers takes away the mystery. I agree with them, mysteries stimulate our imagination, are something exciting, allow for analysis and making up theories. In fact, most of us like, maybe even need, mysticism. Many humans readily embrace religion without a scientific basis, not necessarily because religion provides answers where science does not; they have no problem with acknowledging that ‘God works in mysterious ways’. A completely rational world view doesn’t seem to be attractive for many humans.

There are certain aspects of Lost though where I don’t accept the absence of answers. A minor one is the question how what happened to the survivors of Ajira Flight 316 happened. It seems very strange that this question wasn’t answered. The only reason I can think of was shoddy planning of the writers who didn’t have enough space anymore to tie an answer in the story. A major one is the character of Walt. In the early seasons Walt’s character received a lot of attention, and it was clear he was very special. Then he got off the island, and after seeing the finale we can only conclude that he was irrelevant in the end. Based on what I saw in the earlier seasons I was convinced that he was going to be important, and it is very awkward to conclude that he was insignificant.

Also, I’d to thank the Dutch broadcaster of Lost, NET 5, for broadcasting the episodes of the last season of Lost only three days later than in the USA, unlike earlier seasons. That was done because they feared that potential viewers would get impatient and illegally download Lost instead. I’m delighted that Net 5 finally understands now that we don’t like to be an afterthought in Europe and get to see episodes of American TV series months after they aired in the USA.

Unfortunately, RTL 7 still doesn’t get it. A few months ago they finished broadcasting the seventh season of 24, not long before season eight finished airing in the USA. They’re not making haste with broadcasting season eight in The Netherlands either. That’s very unfortunate, because I’ve grown to like 24 very much after watching season seven. It’s a pity I didn’t follow the earlier seasons in the past, and I’d gladly buy it on DVD if it were affordable. 24 is extremely addictive, having mastered the use of cliffhangers.

I’ve seen the following this month:

• Rachel Getting Married (2008)
• Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
• Into the Wild (2007)
• The Last King of Scotland (2006)
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
• Waltz with Bashir (2008)
• Khadak (2006)
• Gomorrah (2008)

The list features a lot of foreign language films. Waltz with Bashir, Khadak and Gomorrah are respectively Hebrew, Mongolian and Italian language films, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley is  an Irish film. It’s not that the American films lack quality in any way, but it’s liberating to see something different and evade the American cultural domination.

Rachel Getting Married is a very good film. If I had to summarize the film in a proverb, I’d say ’once a thief, always a thief’. In it’s essence the film explores the question if we should keep condemning persons for past sins or forgive them. It does that skillfully, and ends happily with a wonderful wedding day party which is a wonderful experience. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a good comedy, it’s an excellent advertisement for visiting Spain. I’m still not convinced that Barcelona in particular would interesting to visit though. Into the Wild had a surprising ending for me, if you want to be surprised too, don’t look it up on Wikipedia or read the book. I keep thinking how I would have dealt with the river with the strong current. Assuming there weren’t any safer places to cross it, I think I would have risked crossing it by swimming, but I’m saying that with the wisdom of hindsight.

The Last King of Scotland was the only film I didn’t rent, it was broadcast on TV (not sure if it was in March). Whitaker does a awesome job depicting a madman like Idi Amin, and definitely deserved the Academy Award he received as best actor. The film got me thinking about the authoritarian regimes and low quality of government in Africa in general, is it all caused by European decolonization, or are the Africans themselves too blame as well? It’s sad to see that so many people followed Idi Amin and executed his orders for their own gain, even though they knew Amin was mentally ill and all he did was bring misery to Uganda. Of course ‘civilized’ Europeans also suffered from this in the first half of the 20th century, and considering that Europe had a longer history of development and never experienced decolonization the Europeans are the ones who deserve to be blamed most of all.

To keep true to the theme of proverbs, when I was watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley I had to think of an aphorism written by Nietzsche. ‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.’ The British are the oppressive monsters, and in fighting them the Irish lose their ideals which they were originally fighting for.

Waltz with Bashir is an eye catcher because it is an animated film. Do not let the fact that it is animated fool you, it’s far from child’s play or rubbish. The animation is excellent. The film is a journey towards the past, the truth which is reached at the end of the film. The distinction between dreams and reality is fluent in this film without being confusing, unlike the next film.

Khadak was a challenging film to see. The distinction between reality and dreams was blurred, which makes it difficult to make sense of the film. It demands much interpretation, it makes a heavy use of symbolism and long silent scenes. The cinematography is awesome with shots of a huge, flat and empty Mongolian steppes covered with snow, depicting only a shepherd and his horse. Certain shots are very impressive, such as the old nomad who doesn’t want to break with his traditional way of life sitting on a chair, with two government officials lifting his chair to drag him to a truck so he can be transported to the ‘civilized’ world. To summarize the film I’d say that it is criticism on the encroachment of the modern world on the traditional nomadic way of life in Mongolia. The first half progresses very slowly, I got frustrated and had to convince myself that I wanted to see it to the end. When I finished the movie, I was glad I had done so, I felt rewarded.

Gomarrah was a disappointment. It’s not a bad film, but it’s not executed good enough. The film uses an ensemble cast, which is not a problem in itself, but it does become a problem if the cast is large and the story lines become confusing because there are too many and they ‘switch’ too often. It was difficult to understand what was going on, my father was watching too and read the book the film is based on. He easily understood that the film depicted illegal toxic waste dumping and illegal garment factories, I didn’t understand that so easily. After having seen half of the movie my father got bored and wanted to see the sports news, I had to agree with him that it the film wasn’t really going anywhere. The next day I watched it to the end alone. In the second half the murdering begins and many people including part of the cast end up dead. The film doesn’t feature much of a plot, it mostly depicts mafia members pursuing all kinds of illegal activities, the bottom line is that the mafia are bad guys. This film – even though it is quality – didn’t deserve to be on some critics top ten lists for 2008, which was the reason it was on my list of films I wanted to see.

A week ago an amateur Uruguayan filmmaker reached the news because he landed a Hollywood contract after he showed the world his short film titled ‘Panic Attack’. He created the five minute long short film with a $ 300 budget, Hollywood offered him a $ 30 million budget to create a full-blown film. If he can do this much with $ 300, what he could do with $ 30 million would be nothing short of awesome. He made a very impressive short film. But there are more great short amateur and fan made films, so I wanted to mention those on my weblog as well.

Let’s start with another amateur film, titled ‘What’s in the Box?’. This one became a YouTube hit earlier in 2009. It was created by a Dutch student who claims it was done for € 150. According to an interview he was contacted by Hollywood as well.

There are a lot of fan films which are very impressive as well. Escape from City 17 is based on the video game Half-Life 2. Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning is a great parody on Star Trek and Babylon 5. The Star Wars fan film Imperial Military Personnel Stories takes the stormtroopers as it’s subject. Note that the last two fan films are feature length, full blown films.

Last month I visited the video rental store again and picked up a few films. Like last time I didn’t choose some titles on the spot, but I used a list containing titles which got the approval of the critics, with some exceptions. I don’t want to waste my time watching inferior films. I’ve seen:

• Elegy (2008)
• Hunger (2008)
• Ong Bak 2 (2008)
• Juno (2007)
• REC (2007)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
• The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

All films were good. I had expected a bit more from REC considering the praise it received, I liked it nevertheless. But it might be more controversial for others who don’t like horror movies following the documentary style of The Blair Witch Project.

All I expected from Ong Bak 2 were kick-ass fight scenes and I was not disappointed. However, the rest of the film is merely an excuse or shell for the fighting scenes, and with the addition of a fantasy element it makes the film totally ridiculous. At least the first Ong-Bak had a reasonable story besides the fighting scenes, since then Tony Jaa’s films have gone downhill. There are martial arts films which can score high grades both as a film and as a fighting scene spectacle, as Unleashed for example proves. Tony Jaa should aim for that too.

I don’t have much to comment on the other five films, they were all great. The Other Boleyn Girl was primarily interesting because of the two actresses in the lead roles, but afterwards it aroused my irritation when I read that the film was ahistorical. Contrary to my expectation though. Hunger left a far greater impression on me than The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s a film of little words, but near the end of the film it takes a radical turn with a very long scene of a dialogue filmed with a stationary camera, showering the viewer with a waterfall of words. It’s disturbing to see that people are willing to die for a political cause and out of desperation. The events depicted in the film happened in reality almost thirty years ago, sad to realize that a civilized nation like the United Kingdom didn’t respect human rights not too long ago.

Yesterday I watched the film Elizabeth, one of the many historical drama films which takes significant liberties with regard to history. Some other good examples are Gladiator, Troy and Alexander. For details on the historical deviations (deviations from the myth in the case of Troy to be exact) refer to the relevant sections in the Wikipedia articles which I linked.

Certainly Elizabeth and Gladiator are well made films if we take the historical deviations into account. Some would say artistic license would have been necessary to produce a high quality film. However, I can’t imagine why certain historical deviations would have been necessary for applying artistic license. These are small details mostly, like the barbarian chieftain in the opening scene of Gladiator speaking in the modern German language, while that language didn’t exist yet for a long time. It is also stated in the beginning of the film that Rome was founded as a republic, which is of course not true. Another example is that in Troy Aeneas is portrayed as a child. Those deviations have nothing to do with artistic license, but all with negligence and indolence on the part of the scriptwriters.

But then the question if artistic license is necessary to produce a good film is necessary. I don’t think that’s true either. Having read the Iliad, I think it could have been translated to a film without deviating from the myth. Of course, because it’s an epic far more characters would have to be included, the gods would have to be included. Probably it should be covered in two or three separate films, but if that was possible for Lord of the Rings, then why not for the Iliad? The only problem I’d see would be the talking divine horses, but if anyone in Hollywood would have the guts to do it and do it well, it could be successful. The same treatment would apply to Alexander, it had potential but was poorly executed. If the old Ptolemy as storyteller would have been ditched and the story would have been told in chronological order without flashbacks, with a better script and if it would have been made as a trilogy it would have been awesome. The story told in Gladiator is very loosely based on real events. I think it would have been a better idea if different subject matter from the history of the Roman Empire would have been chosen for a film. Why not Hannibal? That would be an exciting story to tell, and it wouldn’t need deviation from history.

One last complaint is that in neither Gladiator, Troy or Alexander the Latin or Ancient Greek language is used. The film The Passion of the Christ has proven that a film which is not spoken in the English language can be very successful with English-speaking audiences. Hopefully future historical drama films will feature Ancient Greek and Latin.

A film about Elizabeth’s life probably wouldn’t need any historical deviation to make it exciting either. Not only are the historical deviations in the film Elizabeth quite serious regarding the historical facts, but I also question the behaviour depicted in the film. Especially the rather informal negotiations between the English Parliament and Elizabeth seemed dubious to me, as did the treatment of problems relating to Elizabeth’s gender. Burghley’s remark that Elizabeth is a woman near the end of the film seemed rather insolent to me for her most trusted advisor, or anyone else for that matter.

I have one unsolved question though concerning the film Elizabeth. During the coronation ceremony in the film it is stated that she is queen of England, Ireland and France. Wikipedia confirms that. France is still mentioned in the style of the English monarchs until 1801. However, with the French conquest of Calais in 1557 the English lost all their possessions in France, before Elizabeth became queen in 1559. Elsewhere on Wikipedia it is confirmed that British monarchs continued to style themselves as kings of France until 1800 even though they had lost all their territories there. Can anyone tell me why they continued to deny the reality for centuries?

I think I’m not going to watch historical drama films any more in the future if they continue the liberal use of artistic license.

A few weeks ago I saw Drag Me to Hell in the cinema. It was about time a good horror film was released again, certainly in recent years there haven’t been much good ones. It’s not a typical horror film, possibly more puke and slime is shown than blood, and it combines horror with comedy. It also had a scare scene which managed to startle me, which is quite an accomplishment. What disappointed me was the plot twist in the ending, not because of it’s consequences, but because I was able to see through it easily when I saw the scene which foreshadowed it, and it was predictable. Nevertheless, this film was worth watching.