User Review

I did not watch this film with preconceptions, and I watched it on a perfectly normal television. So any particular technological advances meant very little me. It's story was so-so. I never got bored, but then I wasn't expecting an action film. The acting fine. I don't really see how someone can give this a 1/10 or call it the worst this year, or even this month. There could have been more to it, but it almost felt like a biopic to me, and erring on the side of conservatism. The events were not huge, escalated, Brian Lynn did not kill Osama Bin Laden, there was no sex scene with a cheerleader... The film appeared very 'dry' visually, the clarity I understand now in some part due to Lee's filming at a high frame rate, and resolution. Throughout I drew comparison's to the works of Brian De Palma. Characters would often stand front on to the camera, talking to the camera as if it were the subject in their conversation, and I wonder if this was chosen to foreground the detail, or the 3D in which it was presented in many cinemas, or make the whole thing more 'real' for us the viewers. It felt unreal to me, like those films where they film in a first person. 3D is still very much a gimmick, one that distracts from all but the spectacle in films, weakening dramas when shown in 3D, and everything when presented in 2D. If it's to really go beyond that it needs to be something you either show in 3D, or not at all.