Loved it, loved it, loved it. Loved the blend of serious drama and absurd humor, loved the attention to 1970s-era detail.
The only real sour note was the casting of Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez.
This is Tony Mendez.
Obviously, the reason he was played by Ben Affleck is that this was Affleck's movie, and he wanted to play the hero. Except for a movie that went
way out of its way to make everyone and everything look
exactly the way it looked then, and took obvious pains to try to avoid painting the Iranians as monolithic brown villains, the Ben Affleck casting was really noticeable.
The contrast was brought home during the closing credits -
( Spoilers solely for the closing credits, not anything in the movie )Also, I'm reaching the point where I can barely stand watching film trailers anymore, because I find the majority of them so upsetting. With very few exceptions, it's just white guy macho hero after white guy macho hero, including the Lincoln movie which features a lot of white people arguing about slavery and no black stars or even,
you would think from the trailer, speaking roles. Then there was the Alex Cross movie, which is
a breakthrough unusual, in a way - it's a standard serial killer vs. FBI profiler story, except this time, the hero/brilliant profiler is black.
ETA: Danegen reminds me it's not the first of its kind - Morgan Freeman played the same character in previous movies.Only I couldn't be glad to see it, because aside from the fact that the movie looks painfully by-the-numbers, the killer's gimmick is that he likes to torture women to death - and
the trailer makes it appear that the torture is depicted in loving detail.
