(It may be due to shithouse search skills, but I can't find a thread for this either here or in Focused Film Discussion so booooom, here's one now.)
By the end I didn't feel like the film has a lot to say beyond conveying what Refn and Hardy see as the spirit of the guy, but the method of that conveyance is ridiculously engrossing to me.
Without a regular character arc the risk of drift and loss of momentum needs to be met with sharp editing decisions and almost every beat of the 92 minutes kept me on my toes and on the edge of my seat. Like, I was perched at the edge of my seat, on my toes. Literally. A lot of shots are held nice and long, but instead of dropping the momentum ball they only increase the anticipation for what's about to happen. The psychopath-as-artist throughline seems tritely artsy-fartsy on paper, but in execution, in Refn's hands, it's pretty damned magical.
Of Refn's other films I've only seen his 1996 debut, Pusher, but the assuredness of this makes me hungry like the wolf to see at least the other two from his trilogy and hunt out Valhalla Rising. I know not everyone loved it, but some people have to be wrong. Right?
Anyway, Tom Hardy is FUCKING AWESOME! Anyone who can steal scenes from Joseph Gordon Levitt like he did in Inception has something. Hardy has more than something. Apart from Michael Fassbender I can't think of another English speaking actor of the under 35 generation who has as much raw screen presence. If anyone has what it takes to be the new Brando or Daniel Day-Lewis, it's those two.
I know I'm not the only one who saw this - the Inception threads showed me that - so how did you guys and gals take this? (ps, if you disagree with anything I've said you're wrong. I'll still adore you, but you're wrong).
