The Movie: Nightmare Alley
The Director: Guillermo del Toro
The Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard
Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn
The Story: An ambitious carny with a talent for manipulating people with a few
well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist who is even more
dangerous than he is.
The Review:
Guillermo del Toro will always be one of my favorite directors.
Pan's Labyrinth is one of my all time favorite movies. Over 11 years,
he had a run of amazing movies that included Blade II, Hellboy,
Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and
Pacific Rim, each of them with the director's dark, signature style and
also unique in their own individual ways. One of the things that has always
stood out is del Toro's ability to create frightening and magical creatures
while telling fantastic stories that go beyond anything we could have ever
imagined.
I love how this movie looks. It's beautiful and colorful and dark and it just
looks so cinematic, if that makes sense. Every moment of the movie seems like
all the time necessary was given to make it the best it could possibly be from
a visual standpoint and you can tell that del Toro had a very specific vision
for how he wanted everything to look. The cast for the movie also seemed
meticulously curated to maximize every character from the headlining stars to
the bit players and background roles.
Now, as for the story. Well, that's another story. For me, this was a tale of
two halves. The first being a brilliantly woven tale of a man on the rise
literally within the confines of a circus and an eclectic cast of characters
all beautifully woven into a magical and mysterious fable. The second half
devolves into a typically told tale of lust and greed and pettiness that gets
less and less interesting as it meanders along and for far too long. Maybe I
was hoping for something more mystical behind all the smoke and mirrors yet
all there was was a charade and something much less than the director is
typically capable of.
The cast is actually quite phenomenal, again most notably in the first half of
the film, and is highlighted by Bradley Cooper who does some pretty amazing
work with how his character transforms, multiple times, over the course of the
movie. I don't want to say I was disappointed in Cate Blanchett's performance,
that's not the right word, and yet I felt she wasn't quite right for the role
although I have to say I will never not want her to be in any movie really. I
always love Rooney Mara, if you haven't seen what she did in
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then you should remedy that immediately, and while she is just fine
here, I feel she is also underutilized in the role she is given.
For me, I think this movie is the victim of expectations as it's much less of
what I was hoping for from a director the caliber of Guillermo del Toro, I
mean in a dark fairy tale magic type of way, even as it showed so much promise
through the first act and then some. Ultimately, this movie was a parlor trick
with flashy lights and bold colors all meant to distract the audience from
something that becomes much darker and more commonly human I suppose is the
best way to put it.
The Verdict:
Nightmare Alley left me dreaming of a different path and a more mystical journey the likes of which we are used to from Guillermo del Toro. A stellar cast couldn't save a subpar story that is slightly saved by how gloriously beautiful the whole thing looks on screen.
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