Legacy of Lies seems to have everything you'd need to make such darkish spy thriller. Exotic locations, seriousness, corrupt parties, family ties, desperate circumstances and a McGuffin to run for.
Problem is, even despite having the right components, they forgot to buy the glue. And decided to slap those components together with wet dirt, instead. Which, of course, isn't sufficient.
Most of the movie is about fetching a briefcase with "files" and apparently a nerve agent (gotta put exotic poison name in your movie, right). Why is it of any importance, isn't really clear, aside vague clues shown on TV screens around the movie every now and then.
The dialogues are very short and functional, with little to no drama, so characters only say what they have to say. Basically, as if they're reading plot points off a list, rather than actually having conversations. And attempt at having any drama (musings of mission gone wrong in the past) is so cringeworthy, it'd be better if they didn't do it at all.
Actors are nice to watch. They all feel interesting enough to be a part of something memorable.
Then there's action, the spectacle of the show. And sure, it's plentiful and well-executed. Camera angles work, shots are long enough and so on. But then, there's big ugly thing in the room that ruins it all --
Audio. Every gun sounds muffled. Soundtrack feels like random generic action soundtrack, with no tension and release, never stops and doesn't follow what's happening on the screen even by smallest bit. Which makes it super weird and out of place. Rather than giving rhythm to the action, and slowing down to relax, it just does its own random thing, basically turning everything into weird, incoherent soup. Same for dialogues, for example, they are often muffled or lost in background so you never truly concentrate on them. There's nearly any atmospheric sound whatsoever, cities don't sound like cities, cars don't make sound when they take off, etc. Watching this movie without sound at all would probably result in better experience than watching it drowned into really, really badly designed sound it has. I felt like it ruined entire thing.
Other problem that drags it down is concentrating on action too much. Yes, it's nice, and necessary, but in a spy movie with capital hopping, evading capture and being chased two powerful forces, what do you think is the important or exciting part?
This movie, in extremely blunt and rather dumb manner, skips over every possible bit of TRADECRAFT, characters just magically book flights and hotels under false names, acquire cellphones and weapons, get tracked to the other side of the Europe, all that'd be really interesting see... is cut out. For some reason, scenes of throwing elbows at faces and dreams of a dead woman was more important that the very essence of a spy thriller.
So in the end, you get a movie that had all the ingredients to be good, but ruined itself with extreme incompetence at cooking them.
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