I suppose that's true, but it seems fairly banal to me compared to the dynamic I talk about in the piece: moving from almost complete isolation to one of the most crowded locations on the planet, and the psychic disruption that inevitably entails.

I wasn't referring to the ending specifically, but to the entire Times Square sequence/half.

Yeah, I think it was decided that the film is just too small to warrant a Spoiler Space. But here's the ending spoiled for those who are curious. I've rot13'd it so you can't see it by mistake; cut-and-paste it into rot13.com

I chose to emphasize my frustration with Deller's lack of ambition. That shouldn't really be held against the film itself, which is…fine.

I'm okay with having two of the three major critics' groups in my corner. It's not as if I'm making a case for Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party.

The Fallen Idol is even better.

I confess that I didn't rewatch the entire movie to write this short piece, so I don't have a rating. But based on my memory, it'd probably be in the low 50s somewhere, which gradewise would be a C+/B-.

I'm gonna cut-and-paste a question I asked elsewhere, because I'm curious to see whether anyone has a plausible explanation.

I'm probably older than you are, unless you're pretty old. Hipster jadedness, that's your call. But yes, I am serious. I think it's a good but by no means great film.

It sounded like bathing because it *was* bathing.

Bathing pigs. Not painting them.

I know you're kidding but I want to stress again that I *like* all three of these films. Just think they fall well short of being masterpieces, and for the same fundamental reason (which to some extent, as I admit, is just "wanting to have an audience").

You make some good points, but still, I think there was a way to explore the competing interests without having Maya yell at the director that he'd better give her the team she needs or she'll drag him in front of an oversight committee. (A former C.I.A. officer who wrote about the film, mostly positively, singled…

To me, the movie is 90% about people being driven nuts by uncertainty and then the last 10% is about Gyllenhaal proving, if only to himself, that Arthur Leigh Allen was the guy. True, they were never able to prove it, but as Gyllenhaal says (in what's essentially the film's thesis): "Just because you can't prove…

This is at @avclub-f7ab113fb2bdb9d5674ef9ab826d7979:disqus ; WOULD DISQUS PLEASE GET ITS SHIT TOGETHER W/R/T NESTED REPLIES.

As I go on to say, it suddenly becomes a *personal* revenge movie, which is something quite different from national retaliation.

Author here. "No explicit narrative function" would probably be more accurate. It does communicate some information about how the relationship developed—I just don't think it's necessary information. You could cut it from the film without leaving unanswered questions or anything. But that'd be a shame, because it's…

D'oh! I actually did read it all the way through right before turning it in, still didn't catch that. Sharp eye.

"Others have pointed out that in the film, not a single useful piece of information is gleaned from torture"

"Others have pointed out that in the film, not a single useful piece of information is gleaned from torture"