War Story (2014)

Why so much hype?

Best movie ever!

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

For one to enjoy any cinematic experience one should have some back ground as to what the characters are going through and the reason for this post traumatic behavior. Watching the main character spend 15 minutes of screen time just rearranging a hotel room and experiencing some kind of self discovery of injuries without any idea of a background to the story is rather boring. To the very end when the credits were rolling, one is wondering as to what the Plot was and what's the end. Total waste of time. The Screen play, the Direction, the Cinematography are all rather amateurish in the garb of artistic cinema. Surely a great story told in a most haphazard way. What it could have been and what it ended in.

I think the director was attempting to complete a movie with the fewest possible camera moves. It was drudgery at the highest level...what a terrible effort. And what the heck was the storyline??? Acting was marginal. The history leading to the events we saw was poorly explained. Too much foreign language spoken. The camera shots were endless with nothing changing in them. The written summary must have been gleaned from reading the book because there wasn't any of that explanation in the movie. I wonder if this was the directors first movie? That would explain everything. I'm not even clear on what countries they were in, and what nationalities they all were.

I expected an entirely different film when I decided to watch War Story, but I feel some of the reviews have been a little unfair. This film's biggest flaw is being wrongfully advertised as a thriller, as it is very slow-paced and it can easily bore an audience, specially when they're not prepared to sit through 90 minutes of long scenes of the lead character reflecting on her traumas, life, death, etc. But this is all intentional and I believe well justified in the end, War Story's highlights are the beautiful music score (Which I'll admit was the reason I watched in the first place), a brilliant performance by Catherine Keener, and her ability to carry a film with not much dialogue but a lot of visual references, you can really see and feel Lee's pain and her suffering in some of the most subtle body language and expressions, and her frustration too. If you are expecting a violent, brutal, thriller you'll be disappointed, but as a slow-paced, believable and grievous drama that feels accurately portrayed and believable, you will appreciate it and by the end of the film you'll be left with a sense of full-circle closure.

We watched this movie because it was rated a 7.1 at the time that I looked it up. What a mistake that was. This movie starts out slow with little explanation as to what is going on or the events that led up to it. It gets progressively slower and more pointless and confusing. How long can the camera follow someone down the street filming the back of their head in silence without boring the viewer to tears. The resent trend of directors filming characters staring off into space with blank expressions for excessive lengths of time is taken to a new level in War Story. I did not expect this one to be lighthearted but I did not expect to be suicidal by the end of it either. As much from the pointless cinematography, that had no bearing on the story, as from my desperate desire for it to be over. War Story is the worst movie I have seen in the last 15 years.