Are we praising this movie just because of whats going on out there?

Spoilers below.

Look, I know whats going on right now sucks but is it really an excuse to give a subpar film a good review just because its about exactly whats being yelled out in the streets? It’s almost as if people are afraid to talk bad about it or something.

First of all, let me say i did not hate this movie, in fact when it started I was hooked, I loved the back and forth between the main actors and the moment the film changed ratio to go to the nam scenes I was floored, I was LOVING this movie.

Then it just started getting a bit stale, overacting, sometimes bad acting, stuff that I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh or not, random landmine retrievers showing up at the most obvious moment, casually the one white person one of the actors had met a few moments before in the film, etc.

Then the nam action scenes also started getting stale, the whole movie was starting to suck real bad then Jean Reno shows up again to save the movie.

By the time the movie ended there’s a scene where a wife and a son get a check from one of the main characters, I had literally forgotten all about that character, I didn’t know who he was or who that family was, I had to go to IMDB and search the name to remember what had happened to him.

It was the character who hilariously dies in what looks like a death straight out to “the naked gun”
Not entirely sure if that was meant to be funny or not but I was laughing my butt off, I will give Spike Lee the benefit of the doubt and say he did it as a joke.

Now there are good things in this movie, I learned things about the war I didn’t know, Spike’s message feels from the heart rather than just some obligatory BLM crap, using Jean Reno in this movie was legendary, the guy steals the movie in the two scenes he is in.

Delroy Lindo is obviously the main attraction in this movie and boy does he carry it with confidence, I wouldn’t be surprised of he were to get an Oscar for this, he is that good, even if it gets a bit to self indulgent by the end.

I still liked the movie and I am recommending it to people, I just think if the world wasn’t what it is right now, the reviews would be worse.

Something I also didn’t like is how they didn’t even seem to care about making the actors look younger in the war scenes, so you have Chadwick who is in his 40’s but looks like a 35 year old, with a bunch of grandpas and he is bossing them around. I am not sure if this was a statement from Spike Lee, sort of as an anti “Irishman” move, showing how you don’t need deaging technology (which interestingly enough is used in the picture that shows at the end) or if it was just lack of budget or an artistic choice but I never liked this decision.

Also, we could hace used better choreography on how Paul accidentally kills Norman, that looked again like something straight out of Looney Toons.

The heart and message of the movie are as solid as vibranium (see what I did, vibranium, téchala, wakanda, Chadwick Boseman, damn that was good) but spike lee isn’t a very solid filmmaker when it comes to the other technicalities related to film.

Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Just Mercy is free to rent this month, I’ll give that a shot later.