The first 30 minutes of this film are fantastic. I love me a quiet, super pretentious film where the characters just yell names of biblical and philosophical figures at each other.
Then, to my surprise, we come out of the desert for an 80 minute slow wheeling story in LA where the cast is stacked but the plot goes to die. I don’t remember a single interesting thing happening between Mark, the guy from White Lotus, the French actress, the character actors who I vaguely recognize, and Sterling K Brown. No scene without Oscar Isaac is interesting, and even he loses some steam after a while. The biggest problem is that got bad direction. He never matched Oscar Isaac. He could’ve been a great quiet and contemplative foil, but he sadly never brought that and instead looked uninterested most of the time.
Keep your movies in the desert, and your cast small is the lesson. Also I read the synopsis after I watched it..his doppelgänger?? Where does that come from. They should’ve really leaned into the “devil in the desert” metaphor from the beginning.
The first 30 minutes of this film are fantastic. I love me a quiet, super pretentious film where the characters just yell names of biblical and philosophical figures at each other.
Then, to my surprise, we come out of the desert for an 80 minute slow wheeling story in LA where the cast is stacked but the plot goes to die. I don’t remember a single interesting thing happening between Mark, the guy from White Lotus, the French actress, the character actors who I vaguely recognize, and Sterling K Brown. No scene without Oscar Isaac is interesting, and even he loses some steam after a while. The biggest problem is that got bad direction. He never matched Oscar Isaac. He could’ve been a great quiet and contemplative foil, but he sadly never brought that and instead looked uninterested most of the time.
Keep your movies in the desert, and your cast small is the lesson. Also I read the synopsis after I watched it..his doppelgänger?? Where does that come from. They should’ve really leaned into the “devil in the desert” metaphor from the beginning.
