M C

I’ll forego the absolute nonsense of people who want to seem “in the know,” about artsy films. This is not something you watch, then smugly assert you “get it,” and that “not everybody will.” Why? Because it falls flat. It’s unbelievable. When a movie is not believable, it’s not convincing of being possible. Absolutely nobody, ever, speaks like they do in this movie. The catatonic, monotone question…. followed by 30 seconds of dead silence…. and then an equally uninvested, one word answer. More silence. Then a sentence. Everything with these grating 30-second pauses. Completely unrealistic, and therefore unbelievable. We learn, early on as writers, that if you don’t have realism… your story isn’t believable. Had this been cast as a science-fiction, acted by aliens, we could understand the unbelievability. But real people, portraying actual occupations in real-world scenarios…. owes a degree of believability. This was irritating to invest my time in, thinking this slop would pull out of its nose-dive. I’m reminded of those few nonces in college, who had to act cozily “in-the-know,” about some weird piece of music, like, “oh, not EVERYBODY gets it…. You have to UNDERSTAND the message.” Yeah, I’m in season 8, halfway through, typing this as the screen is minimized. I think Martin just spit again, an irritating nuance we get rewarded with as a character trait. I seriously wonder if there are any actors that could have been worse. I don’t think any could have been better. The cartel people are believable. That’s the only thing that didn’t disappoint. Except for their dead air between dialogue. That’s it, in a nutshell. Not one person had normal dialogue. Complete strangers don’t meet, and wait 30-seconds to answer a question, with blank, empty, angsty stares off into the distance. That’s where this insult to movies belongs…. In the distance. If it were a boomerang, it would be awesome if thrown off… it did NOT return, but kept going until it disappeared. I honestly wondered if anybody has called Amazon Prime and tried to get a 30¢ refund from their monthly payment…. just on principle. I feel ripped off I wasted battery life on this. And no, it’s not some “artistic bent, one has to get-to-know.” NOTHING makes up for the complete non-believable dialogue-gaps. As someone else said, this garbage could have been played in 1.5 hours. I think it STILL would have been slow. If you are expecting it to “take off and reveal itself,” skip a few episodes and you’ll see it’s the same mono-gap-dialogue throughout. The only thing this made me think of, is “this is what it must be like to be deaf, and watch a movie.” Shame on whoever sent this to market. This is like knowing your meat is rancid, but sprinkling a smelly spice on it and selling it with an innocent look on your face.