Wednesday, September 10, 2008

David's "Traitor" review




Here.

I tend not to like thrillers. It's just a problematic genre.

3 comments:

Anthony said...

David,

You've written an interesting review for Traitor. The way you describe how the characters aren't given a chance to fully develop makes it clear why you give it a C grade. Reading it is almost like seeing it already.

In general, do you consider the action-drama to be impossible to make perfect, or do you think it can be done but Traitor just didn't make the cut? When I think of action-dramas, or thrillers, many examples come to mind. The Fugitive from 1993 comes to mind. Heck, even The Dark Knight might be called an action-drama. Of course, your definition might be a different from mine.

David Swindle said...

Anthony,
I appreciate your thoughts.

I think it's mainly that Traitor just doesn't make the cut. You can make an A-level thriller and you can make an action-drama (Christopher Nolan's Batman films are good examples as you point out.)

The problem is that you just can't half-ass it. With The Dark Knight Nolan went all the way as a drama and an action film. Traitor kind of goes half way drama and half way action so that you're not satisfied with either component.

Also you have to think about the purpose of the thriller. Its purpose is to thrill. It's easy to do that with an action movie. You thrill the audience with over the top action setpieces. With a thriller, though, you have to thrill the audience with plot, characters, and dramatic elements. That's much harder than action setpieces.

-David

Anthony said...

So it sounds like Traitor is just mediocre like so many action-thriller films. For some reason, they tend to not go full speed ahead, as if they're constantly putting the brakes on themselves. Or, you can say that such films have an identity crisis and never decide what they want to be.

This is starting to sound like a lesson for film school. :-)