The reviews that call this the best have to be from people with an emotional short circuit in their make up or a stake in this movie. The acting, the story and the pacing are all so predictable as to be outrageously insulting. The overwhelming pile up of the bad things that happen to the lead character could have led to a great cathartic ending if there were a point to any of it. When I watch an action/revenge movie such as this I enter into an unspoken agreement with the director and writer that is something like "you keep me reasonably hypnotized and in the moment of your story and I'll suspend belief and turn off the judging part of my brain". The acting, writing and directing are so bad that I never got to turn the judge-ey part of my brain off.
"Bad stuff happened" is in no way a justification for the unbridled and completely amoral killing of total innocents. This movie has no moral center. It's just disgraceful. The blood thirsty climactic violence should be focused tightly on executing (pun intended) said death, mayhem, and cataclysm on the BAD GUYS, not on an office full of men and women that are just doing their 9 to 5 thing. I am in no way an apologist for the scum sucking leeches that came out of the financial crisis with their fortunes not only fully intact, but much larger than before by a few orders of magnitude, all at the expense of the rest of us.
However, the fact that there are people out there that think this movie shows a righteous everyman giving it to the man - instead of an unhinged, murderous, slug with no conscience wreaking senseless havoc - scares me. He has clearly gone mad. No, I take that back. There is no attempt to show him "snapping" and losing it. He is shown as an intensely mean and calculating monster. No amount of "YEAH! GIVE IT TO 'EM!!" blood lust excuses what he's done. He needs to be put down, not signed up for a sequel.
Again, no moral center, no redeeming value.
"Bad stuff happened" is in no way a justification for the unbridled and completely amoral killing of total innocents. This movie has no moral center. It's just disgraceful. The blood thirsty climactic violence should be focused tightly on executing (pun intended) said death, mayhem, and cataclysm on the BAD GUYS, not on an office full of men and women that are just doing their 9 to 5 thing. I am in no way an apologist for the scum sucking leeches that came out of the financial crisis with their fortunes not only fully intact, but much larger than before by a few orders of magnitude, all at the expense of the rest of us.
However, the fact that there are people out there that think this movie shows a righteous everyman giving it to the man - instead of an unhinged, murderous, slug with no conscience wreaking senseless havoc - scares me. He has clearly gone mad. No, I take that back. There is no attempt to show him "snapping" and losing it. He is shown as an intensely mean and calculating monster. No amount of "YEAH! GIVE IT TO 'EM!!" blood lust excuses what he's done. He needs to be put down, not signed up for a sequel.
Again, no moral center, no redeeming value.