Review of Spectral

Spectral (2016)
4/10
Don't Expect Too Much ... and You Won't Be Disappointed
10 December 2016
First, the Good: There is a lot of eye-candy - like a video game trailer. The production design, stunt-work, locations, visual FX (CG AND miniatures), score, and camera work are all very, very respectable - as good if not better than some more "mainstream" movies I've seen. The soldiers (for a change) look like they've actually handled a weapon before (although some of the tactics are kind of silly). The acting is decent -i.e. bland yet not so bad that it's distracting.

The Not-So-Good: The writing is borderline unforgivably bad - with more than a few parts ripped right out of other movies. I felt like I was getting hit with a cliché' club through most of it - and caught myself laughing out loud at how ridiculously BAD some of the dialog exchanges were. There IS one inkling of an original idea here (the genesis of the baddies) but that's about it. Everything else has been done before ... and probably too many times. The Deus Ex Machina factor plus the MacGuyver-esque solutions were really hard to stomach.

Overall, if you're bored and want to shut your brain down for 110 minutes, it's worth watching ... if only for the FX
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