I walked out of this film after about forty minutes, so take my comments accordingly.
This film is well directed, acted, and shot. It effectively portrays the hell its very sympathetic protagonist is going through. It's a story worth telling. The actors are superb.
It's just way too slow. Every scene that I saw (and after 40 minutes, I believe that I had seen a total of about six of them--at least, that's what it felt like)was about three times as long as it had to be. The scene made its point, and then just kept going. And going. And going.
I get it: The protagonist, a good and decent man, is being abused by. . . well, just about everyone. I got it after the first 30 seconds of the first scene. All he can do is take his next punch and keep on keeping on.
The first thing I did when I got home was check the total running time for this film: 91 minutes. In other words, about the minimum acceptable length for a feature. And that's almost always the case with films that move this slowly: The writer (invariably also the director) doesn't have enough ideas or story to sustain a feature. So he just stretches every scene long past the point it should be stretched.
What you end up with is a painfully slow, paper-thin film.
This film is well directed, acted, and shot. It effectively portrays the hell its very sympathetic protagonist is going through. It's a story worth telling. The actors are superb.
It's just way too slow. Every scene that I saw (and after 40 minutes, I believe that I had seen a total of about six of them--at least, that's what it felt like)was about three times as long as it had to be. The scene made its point, and then just kept going. And going. And going.
I get it: The protagonist, a good and decent man, is being abused by. . . well, just about everyone. I got it after the first 30 seconds of the first scene. All he can do is take his next punch and keep on keeping on.
The first thing I did when I got home was check the total running time for this film: 91 minutes. In other words, about the minimum acceptable length for a feature. And that's almost always the case with films that move this slowly: The writer (invariably also the director) doesn't have enough ideas or story to sustain a feature. So he just stretches every scene long past the point it should be stretched.
What you end up with is a painfully slow, paper-thin film.