Amelia (2009)Starring: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston.
Directed by: Mira Nair.
MPA Rating: PG.
Reviewer's Rating: 2 /10.
Studio:
Running Time: 111 minutes.
Genre: Bio Drama.
Before watching Amelia I had my expectations up high about this bio drama starring Hilary Swank a two times academy award winner for her performances in Boys don’t cry (1999) and Million Dollar Baby (2004) ,Richard Gere a golden globe award winner and one of my favorite actors ,Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston.
Amelia is a bio drama of the life of Amelia Earhart the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, an American aviation pioneer and an author.
The movie follows the life of Earhart as a child falling in love with the sight of air crafts and deciding to fly ever since, she grows up, marries George Putnam (Gere) a successful publisher who becomes deeply in love with her and helps her unconditionally despite her betrayal all the way to achieving her dreams and ambitions which were all centered around flying until she becomes the most important woman in America and a raw model for all women in the world.
Shocked by the wooden performance of Swank who might have been able to look just like Amelia Earhart but never managed to add life to that accent, hair and that well designed costumes, all I kept thinking during this one hundred and eleven minutes movie is how could Earhart be this dull?!
Swank made it impossible for me to believe that the woman I'm watching on screen is an American aviation pioneer and that the shallow scenes that were shot in the movie are the actual events that took place in the life of such inspirational woman.
In my opinion, Hilary Swank was performing in this movie not acting. She never leveled up to that.
The film has beautiful cinematography where Stuart Dry Burgh used special camera angles and perfect lighting to create the right feeling of time as the events take place in the years between 1928 and 1937 also the right feeling of place where the film was shot in several places of the world: South Africa, New York, Toronto, Ontario, Park wood Estate in Oshawa, Nova Scotia, Dunn vile, Ontario, and Niagara-on-the-lake.
As for direction it hadn’t done any better than the acting in this film. The events is this film happens automatically without touching you in anyway, director Mira Nair informs us of headlines of Earhart's life , as if she is doing a computer task .
Mira Nair used contemporary newsreel footage of Earhart while computer generated imagery effects were made for the flying scenes she also used two Replica air crafts reaching a 40 million dollar budget apparently a large number according to the gross revenues worldwide up till now ( 19,233,908).
The film was written by Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan based on East to the Dawn a book by Susan Butler and The sound of Wings a book by Mary S.Lovell. It's such a disappointment when an Oscar winner (Ronald Bass) writes such plain dialog.
I give this movie 2 stars out of 10. If you are a fan of bio dramas and want to watch a good one my advice to you rent Martin Scorsese's The Aviator starring Leonardo DiCaprio or Gus Van Sant's Milk starring Sean Penn. These are bio dramas you WILL enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment