I still can’t accept that Russian localizers translated the name as “finished”, but there is nothing you can do, you have to put up with it. The games of translators with common sense have long become a known fact, just here they actually openly admit that they do not care about the true meaning of the name and the main thing is just to somehow increase interest in the film and drag people to theaters. But what about the movie itself? So, “Ended” belongs to one of the most hated categories of films. Movies about which it is difficult to formulate a clear and objective opinion, not because you are a fool, but because the film itself is. The film, where the viewer is trying with all their might to fill their brains and twist a simple and weak plot into what is not clear. A film where they try to develop a “crazy” intrigue, and then break in the end with their dullness. A film that goes out of its way to show how unusual it is, and in the end turns out to be an absolute blank. But despite all of this, one thing is for sure: this movie is bad. But it also needs to be justified and that is what I will try to do.
Perhaps the plot is the sickest place in the film. If at the beginning and even in the middle, shown by the cutting of the plot, there is at least some intrigue and it is partly interesting to watch, then you can just sob from the end. Absolutely predictable, secondary and, most importantly, a very stupid ending even introduces into a certain stupor, only partially closing the giant plot holes accumulated during the entire film, and creating others. To make it clearer, I will make just one of many questions. Why did the main character even need such a complex and intricate plan when she could do everything directly? From what is shown, it can be concluded that there is no police in their city, for example, and there is no one in the plot who could interfere with it. Then why was it so complicated? The only answer might be that she's just crazy, but that's not an excuse at all. If you evaluate the plot as a whole, then it is quite simple, boring and unjustifiably overwise. And the whole story is pretty weak.
Characters do not save the situation. On absolutely straightforward characters who break through in 10 minutes is simply not interesting to watch. And if you consider that almost every character constantly throws just incredible pathos and tries to show themselves cooler than the rest, then it becomes quite sad. They don’t have the same hoax as the film. The only exception is the English teacher, with whom the main character talks half the film. He still looks more interesting than everyone else. In general, the characters have almost no disclosure and backstory.
There is nothing special about actors. It would have looked interesting in Margot Robbie’s career, but she already has a very similar role in Suicide Squad, so it’s nothing special. Although she played well, I must admit, there are no special claims to her. Dexter Fletcher, Mike Myers and great actor Simon Pegg also played well. Although deliberate overplay sometimes confused.
Well, with all this, the film must have drawn an external realization? After all, the incredibly stylish modern neonoir, shot in neon colors is really very interesting, the main thing is to do it qualitatively and add something of your own. But in this respect, the film does not become a revelation. This style has been met many times before and the film does not add anything of its own to it. Solid neon colors look beautiful, but I personally felt that the colors are too bright and pretentious. One example is Blade Runner 2049, which has a similar color scheme, but the colors themselves are much less cutting and more balanced. The music here is ordinary, it just exists, creates some kind of rhythm and that’s all. Operator work also can not boast of anything unusual. Well, too aggressive and intrusive pitch is also not good for the picture.
As a result, we can conclude that the End is a very weak and incredibly pretentious film, which with its plot and characters does not justify the style used. And the quality of the conclusion suggests itself.
This is a fake film. This is not a crime drama in the style of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. It's an ordinary feminist thriller. This truth is revealed only in the second half of the session, while the first one tirelessly tries to lead the audience to other wilds. It’s the same thing that not everyone will like.
"Terminal", first nicknamed by our distributors as "Finite", then - as "Finnish" (by the way, all three names are quite suitable for the picture), is a sluggish, pretentiously filmed, but poorly formed story, headed by the sex symbol of the current generation - Margot Robbie. The popularity of the actress, playing mainly seductive, dangerous and strong heroines, gave rise to her own image: it is now not so easy to move away from it, but you can cultivate without much strain. And it does not matter what intricacies are expected in the next brawl, because Margot will kill everyone - at least so thought debutant Von Stein.
No matter what the child cheered, but in the end it turned out a kind of collected salt. Frankly bad imitating the above-mentioned Tarantino and Richie, Stein reverses “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll (after all, the fairy tale is mentioned for a session about a hundred times), making Alice a villain, and Wonderland a throwaway. The author packs all this in a bright neon wrapper (the neon here is a separate hero, a kind of silent witness to the ongoing treachery), and then futile attempts are made to decorate the narrative with non-trivial dialogues, but poor Vaughn collapses, showing himself as a completely boring and talentless interlocutor. No matter how many twists were thrown over the last half hour, it is not possible to redraw the script for the better: it is immediately clear that an ambitious amateur sat in the corresponding chair, who did not understand the special subtleties of the cinematic language.
Here’s the offending verdict for the film: it could have been made much better. The potential of the presented story is really worthy of attention - but, alas, the attention was paid to it by the wrong person. Imagine what a story about a fatal woman with a black soul and an equally terrible secret left behind would look like if it were taken up by a professional in his field, and not a random copycat. Here we have only a crude sketch, not so bad in appearance, but in general is a very strange and confused experiment, to pass which not everyone dares. Should I? I doubt it.
Recently I had the pleasure to see the film 'Terminal' which translates as 'Finite' but our localizers decided that the name 'Finnish' much closer to the Russian audience. One of the main reasons I wanted to see this movie was Simon Pegg. Being excited about his previous work, I expected from 'Finite' something like that, but no. Margot Robbie is just as crazy and beautiful. She's basically Harley Queen, but I think she looks better here. So what do we have?
At the beginning of the film, I thought I had seen something like this before. And I'm not talking about 'Sin City' or something like that, no. Images of the city on the bottom of the ocean, whose name ' Delight ' slowly emerge in my head. Enclosed space, steel structures, damp and peeled walls, darkness disperse only flashing neon signs, madness and absurdity and almost complete absence of people. The atmosphere was hit only by cars, which flash in the frames a couple of times. Cars, by the way, our: GAZ-24 and 'TAZ', which is somewhat unusual. Perhaps now, for such comparisons, I throw slippers, but still. It is not necessary to take the film seriously, it lacks both protractedness, which can be ruthlessly drunk, and claims to a certain philosophy, which can cause a smile, but you can not consider the absurdity that is happening there, a minus. The viewer, in one of the episodes, is directly told that everything that is happening there is the whim of some abnormal, prone to mystification. . .
It seems that the author really played Bioshock before the filming. DLC for the original game. If in a strip club, where the heroes visit, visitors wore half-masks of rabbits, I would fall out altogether. And if you fantasize, you can even connect it with the third part of the game. This has nothing to do with the film.
That's it. If you are able to enjoy a beautiful picture, despite the simple plot, endure protracted dialogue, sort and glue the best shots in your mind, as well as if you played Bioshock, then the flag is in your hands, go and enjoy the atmosphere, neon and a good soundtrack!
We all expected something unusual after Neon Demon, however, the crime there was only about female fashion and the cruelty of top girls. This is a new level! Now we have before us a mysterious girl pursuing her cunning goals and meeting on her way different personalities, authoritative and not so, especially: Pegg is suicidal inexorably waiting for death or the janitor, always clinging to charisma. Myers is good. And with all this, you have to find out how long the mad lady will keep these people in their plans and for what?
Margot Robbie we know firsthand, from Harley Quinn to calm, seemingly roles in Focus and The Wolf of Wall Street. Here she will unfold in his madness, no doubt! Simon Pegg plays a man brought to condition, and having smoked the latter, his hero will surely get what he is looking for. Mike Myers has not appeared on the screens for a long time since 2003, when he trumpeted his last role, perhaps his appearance is associated with the Internet memes "Cat" that beautifully made for the film "It" Muschetti, but this is one of the versions. And here it comes, his triumphant return in the form of an eccentric cleaner. The rest were distinguished by unusual characters, trips to business, but take into account this neo-noir will let you into such a whirlpool of criminal events and English black humor that not every viewer will appreciate the length of the picture.
The incident with the title only plays into the hands of the film, as we often confuse typing something on a laptop, such as “Of course” or “Finite”, with the word “finished”. And the viewer, on the contrary, will appreciate and awaken in him a great interest in viewing. But on the distributors, I'm still offended. In any case, this will not prevent you from witnessing an unusual plot with a bit of fantasy about Robbie under the colors of Safits.
While new masterpieces are presented in Cannes, we begin the 2018 film season. One of the first films I watched was The Endgame, a story about the fateful girl Annie, who masterfully turns cases in the world of American neon crime. Of course, Margot Robbie is here in all its glory and definitely draws audiences to theaters. But is it worth it?
The narrative of the film takes place in several time intervals, and the tone of it periodically changes, transferring us from simple killers to the curious duet of Margot and Simon Pegg, whose conversations I would listen to on the stage of the theater. At the same time, it is quite easy to follow all the events, and it is unlikely that anything will escape from your eyes. However, if you still manage to miss something, in the film everything is explained. More than once. Not two. Apparently, the director really wanted us to understand all his ideas. But the problem is that Endgame is a collective story of all the crime movies we've seen, where every first/second assumption about the plot turns out to be true. For fans of this genre is a separate circle of hell.
And yet in the finale, when everything seemed to have been told, the film was able to surprise me. Thus, the viewing ended on a encouraging note and the evening went well. In principle, what else is needed, especially when you initially do not overestimate expectations?
Who can I recommend the film to? Well, if you love Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, look. You may not be surprised by the story, but at least look at your favorite actors who do good work.
Waitress, stripper, prostitute, nurse, devil with green eyes - Margot Robbie turns almost into a walking fetish, but even her variety of images can not save ' Terminal' from falling into the deepest pit of bad cinema. Debuting in full meter Von Stein takes his own script parody of any of the novels ' Sin City' only instead of flirting with monochrome plunges the viewer into the abyss of plot absurdity illuminated by countless advertising signs.
An unnamed scene, by default almost the most rotten city on Earth, in which a certain girl decides to pick up the entire local business of hired killers, pitting them against each other. The plot is expressed with the viewer exclusively in cliches, the characters communicate with each other in the language of quotes and clichéd phrases and in general it all looks like a crazy concept, deliberately played theatrical production in the light of neon. But in fact, everything is worse than nowhere - the conventions reigning on the screen could allow you to play with the genre component, turn 'Terminal' into an evil criminal fairy tale, but the minimum of actors does not allow you to spin the already sluggish intrigue, and the nonlinearity of the narrative used at times makes the film even more tedious.
The superficial existentialism of an abandoned railway station, where the paths of lost souls intersect, all this is equal to the countless number of cigarettes smoked in the film, stained with traces of lipstick. Stein wisely uses the minimum set in his hands, but closed spaces at the same time only more emphasize the reigning in the film plot muddle. Margot Robbie as a demonic femme fatale tries to act as the face of the picture, but her insane image lacks the spark that was in 'Suicide Squad' and 'I, Tonya'. A strained smile, dilated pupils - it seems that a little more and this cat will not stand and will begin to bite the necks of those rats that pitted against each other. However, the game with the ambiguity of the figure of the main character does not lead to anything - the local microuniverse only tries to seem like a limbo, but in fact is a common dump of marginals. Constantly appearing allusions to 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' seem unusually vulgar, because the script actually uses them to cover their own void. The entrance to the rabbit hole of the aka gate to the paradise of the local strip club only emphasizes the spherical vacuum in which a rather curious caste of the film is forced to hang out. Mike Myers, Simon Pegg, Dexter Fletcher, Max Irons, Matthew Lewis, Nick Moran - their viewer has somehow already met in the movies before, but even these guys, remaining in the shadow of the fatal blonde, are not able to brighten up the impression of 'Terminal'. After all, you don’t have to be seven inches in your forehead to figure out who’s really going to be the winner in a confrontation whose stakeholders don’t mind playing with a dangerous razor at their own neck.
The main claim to this squalor is not even a refined secondary in each frame, but a short script. The scenes are horribly stretched. The film is only 87 minutes long. Stretching occurs in three ways: (1) Heroes simply walk or sit and watch. 2) In worthless and godlessly overflowing with pauses dialogues, in the best traditions of the film adaptation of “cosmopolis”, we are beginning to play the unfortunate twenty lines of the plot that formed the basis of the script.
A typical dialogue from the film: * half a minute put a little plot, often repeating, walking in circles *; *pause *; - and there is a light?; *pause * - you need to have your head pierced at last (the phrase is repeated at least five times in the film, and it is not one of these); * a slow flyby between the characters so that something neon can be seen outside the window *.
(3) Well, in the second half of the film, the director with a generous hand throws 5-6 incredible (!!!) twists, on which he also tries to stretch the timing to the maximum. After absolutely every twist – which still becomes clear in advance by more than obvious liner – this very twist will savor as long as possible. We are thrown all sorts of flashbacks and let cut phrases from the previous part of the film, which hinted at this twist. And then the stunned character for a couple of minutes amazed by what happened. He is dying, of course.
But let's not pull (haha). The film is just a patchwork of stolen ideas. And don’t think of Tarantine as “stealing from everyone.” Tarantino knows what he's doing. Remember at least the example given by many of the opening scene from his "inglourious bastards." He understands cinema and its rules. And the ability to bypass them or adjust to themselves. A rare gift. Outstanding director. In addition to this, he is, of course, not in moderation eccentric and unstable, so that often annoys and blah blah, sorry, distracted.
It's not even that the movie is bad. The bad thing is that the director in an interview calls him somehow atypical. Although this is the most typical clone of the “bloody-criminal-conversational” style of the mentioned Tarantino and, even more so, Guy Ritchie (even the actor was taken out of “cards, money ...”, and in general almost all the actors are British). Yes, imagine, periodically such clones appear on the horizon. I can casually call Sushi Girl (6/10, in general, the film is a good copy of “mad dogs”; their fans, if they do not shy away from B films, are recommended for viewing) and Catch 44 (4/10, frankly untalented action, you can recommend only to completely obsessed fans of Bruce Willis), and funny, both of these films are better than “Finished”.
What else is there? Actors. Well, as the poster and the title make clear, it's one. And she's bad. Margot completely repeated the role of Harley Queen. Here you have a passionate interest, and dangerous sexuality with a fire of madness, and, in the end, insane bloodlust. Margot is saved by the fact that this film was shot before Tony Against Everyone, and there she was able to give something new. Which means the girl is growing up slowly, or just the director needs a normal one to scream in time. The directors of “Suicide Squad” and “The End” are not normal. More like finished...
Yesterday in Caro October, a very uncrowded premiere of the long-awaited film with Margot Robbie took place. It's an intriguing dark neon "Finished," aka "Finite." Everyone has already managed to scold and outrage about the talent of localizers to turn everything from their feet to something else.
Has it occurred to anyone that the 2004 film with Tom Hanks was called simply “Terminal” at our box office? Or is it that we do not want to repeat ourselves?
So, "Finite" - informal neonoir, which is very much Margot Robbie. And if you love this actress, you’ll just be watching. And if you do not care (this happens?), then most likely you will remain dissatisfied.
But let's be clear.
Beautiful trailer, cool sound, magical Margot with a jerk: this is what everyone saw in the trailer. Something mysterious, dark and, at first glance, exciting. From the behavior of the girl, we realized that she knows no boundaries, so the localizers did not even fantasize. And it was necessary: the plot is tied to a specific place located at the end station. That is, the final is the same participant of events as other characters.
On screen is the desolate outskirts of the city of sins, only neon, darkness and questionable types in the cafe 24/7. Who doesn't shy away from it... And killers, and customers, and prostitutes, and suicides. How the hot blonde got there is a question.
It all starts with an order that, for some unknown reason, really wants Annie (Robby). What follows is a tangled chain of events and actions scattered throughout the film. The director restores the chronology as if out of politeness, so that we at least understand something.
But it's okay, it's great. The dialogue in the diner, short and clear, when someone periodically waving an outraged gun or uttering a phrase-quote, resembles Tarantino. They sit and talk aloud about the “case” they are going to, you know?
Such moments are sharply replaced by dark frames with halftones, where faces can be viewed only in the light of street lamps, and actions can be guessed only by screaming or moaning. This is a completely different genre.
Then switching again: another Annie, a different setting, interesting life-and-death talk. Another genre.
We end up with neon crime, half-crazy gloom, a humorous thriller and a philosophical drama. The epithets can be changed.
Overall, things seem to be going really well at first, and the whole movie feels like something really exciting is about to happen. But the feeling is not justified.
I can’t say there weren’t a few unexpected twists in the film, but for all my love for Margot Robbie, I was expecting more. Yes, without her there would be no film, but the plot was banal and ill-conceived. Annie's story is a story of revenge. And if this revenge was realized, like some of the heroes of Sin City, but in color, with neon and author stuff, I would have no questions. Or if there was a 180-degree turn, and the heroine was on the other side of the barricades. Then it would be like this: the director has a debut, and he got Robbie, let’s evaluate his efforts. Tarantino once said, “I steal from every movie.”
But, alas, the logic in this play about revenge is not enough. Despite the very colorful, bright and alluring visual component, there are many huge white spots in the tape that even a beginner will notice. And if you cut it down to meaning, it's only half an hour of loaded screen time plus a bit of beauty and philosophical reasoning.
So here we have the "Finite" that lacked meaning and action. Please release the wagons if you were expecting more. The doors close, the train goes to disappoint the other spectators.
It remains to admire the beautiful Margot, hypnotic neon and the lights of the night city, and melomania on the soundtrack, which is not yet found on the network. By the way, the list is already on YouTube.
Adventures of a finished Alice in a miracle factory
The film "Terminal" (all its action is mainly set inside the terminal of an abandoned railway station, hence the name of the film), is a ridiculous attempt to recreate on the screen individual storylines of "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll in the format and style of avant-garde neonoir. Theoretically, such a film could be a fun experiment in its genre, but only if it was shot by the Mad Hatter, with the financial and marketing capabilities of Disney. However, a new reading of the ageless classics decided to swing by an unknown Englishman Von Stein, who previously worked only as a second assistant director and a small independent company Margot Robbie “LuckyChap”, for which this film was the second project after “I, Tonya”.
The production budget of the film was more than modest, and “Terminal” decided to shoot with a minimum number of actors in a few days in an abandoned factory in the suburbs of Budapest, the scarcity of locations and scenery of which was replaced by an abundance of neon, corroding the eyes in half the scenes. True, in the history of world cinema there are many examples when having a limited budget, you can shoot a decent movie with an original story, interesting characters and deep dialogue in one single location. "Terminal" does not apply to such films. The sluggish action of the film is completely predictable and by its middle, given the two parallel storylines and five acting characters, it will not be difficult for the viewer to guess the uncomplicated final twist. To save the plot could only go to quite pure hallucinogenic psychedelics, but for this the director had to be Alejandro Jodorowski.
To become a banal plot of “Terminal” is also boring, stereotyped and ridiculous his characters. The film was shot between Suicide Squad and I, Tonya, so the main character Annie in Margot Robbie turned out to be a kind of average-transition link from Harvey Quinn to Tona Harding, with a well-recognized mixture of light madness and cold calculation. Annie's entire film manipulates men, moving them like the queen of hearts on a chessboard with only one known purpose, while displaying tonno-sexual poses and portraying femme fatale, but all this has been shown more than once in previous films with Margot Robbie. Two hapless killers – Vince and Alfred, whose characters were completely written off from the heroes of Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction, try to squeeze out jokes, by all means conjugating the verb “to fuck” and quoting Carroll’s Alice, but all this can cause a slight grin. Syson Pegg, who portrays a terminally ill English teacher with cancer, did not understand how he got into this nonsense and who he should play. But it's especially pathetic to watch the goofy curves of Mike Myers, who plays the mysterious terminal cleaner, constantly whistling the tune of "Danny Boy." Do not act for nine years since the days of Inglourious Basterds, so ineptly in the literal and figurative sense to drive the last nail in the once brilliant comedy film career!
However, if the plot and characters of the "Terminal" is still somehow possible, although with great difficulty to digest, then its dialogues, occupying 95% of screen time, cause real indigestion of the brain. Being a beginner in independent filming and especially in writing scripts, Stein decided not to be particularly wise, but simply fill the film with boring and completely empty dialogues in the style of Tarantinov’s Pulp Fiction with allusions and quotes from Alice in Wonderland. It is clear that Stein wanted to make everything “stranger and stranger”, but he reinvented himself by inventing a meaningless stream of meaningful gibberish, creating the feeling that Alice’s adventures were the only book Stein read in his life, and Pulp Fiction was the only film he watched.
As a result, despite the unusual minimalist-neon visual solution, the creators of “Terminal” turned out not even a film, but rather a very monotonous, chamber pseudo-avant-garde television performance for five actors, in which behind the noir wrapper hides a set of drawn-out, incoherent, viscous, empty and bombastic scenes, overflowing with a lot of borrowing and quoting. In this meaningless, banal and predictable exercise in neon nihilism, there is not even a hint of originality and for a long and painful 90 minutes of viewing, you will start after the killers, two weeks idle in a rented apartment, saying to yourself: “what a complete nonsense” or “I’m damn bored” and very well understand the character Pegg, who talks about various ways to end his life, wanting all this madness to end.
