Since his Oscar win for a memorable role as prima donna wide receiver Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire and critical acclaim for the performance delivered in As Good As It Gets, Cuba Gooding Jr. seems to have been searching for the right vehicle for his unique on-screen personality. His wincing expressions of grim determination and inner turmoil have always seemed plug-and-play ready for action roles, a genre he has explored recently through a series of half-great pictures and direct-to-video misses like Linewatch and End Game.
Therefore, upon seeing the cover art for the DVD release of First Look Studios’ Way of War, Gooding dressed in fatigues with an assault rifle at the ready and eyes blazing for a fight, I was open-minded to the possibilities. After the first forty-five minutes of patient screening of the film, any vision I may have had for Cuba Gooding Jr.’s future as an action star would only be an alternate reality, perhaps actualized in some parallel universe but certainly not here on Earth.
Borrowing a line from the expansive library of Monty Python, this is not a film for viewing, this is a film for laying down and avoiding.
That opinion is not offered cavalierly. The minimum amount of sweat, labor, and time invested in the making of even a small budget film is worthy of credit, but an A for effort is meaningless when consumers of entertainment have less in their wallet to spend. This freshman effort from screenwriters John Carter and Scott Schafer, if assessed only on visual criteria, comes across as a well-shot movie, and that certainly is reason to offer some credit to Carter for pulling double-duty to direct Way of War and either lending a hand to the director of photography or choosing to get out of his way. In either case, the attention to lighting and composition, as well as mood-setting coloring in post-production, are really the only elements that may persuade home viewers to delay hitting the eject button.
But even the best camerawork only produces a pleasing parade of color, light, and motion. The images need a story for context and to keep an audience’s attention. From the very opening, Way of War is a jumble of flashbacks and unconnected sequences that do not advance the plot or reveal enough about the characters and do little more than slow the pace of the film and confuse the viewer. More importantly, it disrupts any opportunities that might have existed to flesh out the main character and motivate us to want to know what motivates him. As it plays, even a cast of solid supporting actors (most notably J.K. Simmons of The Closer, Juno, and the Spider-Man movies and John Terry of Lost and 24) are helpless to rescue the film.
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Article comments
1 - stevenoct
worse movie i have ever seen ... cuba's movies are getting worse by the year !!