journal features

movie review - All the Devil's Men

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2019.05.19

This is a spy story set in the modern, post-Cold War era. It features a soldier who becomes involved in an effort to stop a nuclear weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Starring a son of Mel Gibson in his first acting role, it wanders from gun-fight to gun-fight, expending amoral and uninteresting characters until you know at the end that any victory is going to be rather difficult to feel. I can forgive the corners cut due to a low budget but not the feeling that whoever "wrote" this thing wasn't thinking in terms of characters. Or to be fair, perhaps it was meddled with. But, not my problem. I regret investing the time in this.

Not recommended. Find another contemporary action film. "Extraction", perhaps.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.