E D

I have followed Garland's work with interest, but this is a missed opportunity. The focus feels off, contrived even as much as he has been lately, with previous strange offerings such as 'Men'. Whether this new movie predates the other, it implies a creative misdirection. It's a real mess of a movie. It might have been believable, even interesting, to follow journalist photographers in the 1970s, 1980s, or even 1990s, in a fictitious civil war, but with iPhones everywhere and everyone being able to take photos as they want, the idea that someone even knows a photographer's name feels forced and a missed opportunity to follow someone else. The characters are contrived and flat. It's hard to have barely any interest in their well-being, especially when they photograph every bit of violence and are indifferent to the suffering around them. The main protagonist's fate, therefore, seems well-deserved rather than a tragedy. The President's crimes are a mystery apart from an obscure reference to a massacre. The lack of a real soundtrack only reinforces the lack of style and nuance that his previous collaborations have so successfully demonstrated.