The jacket looked intriguing: the mystery about "Night Watch". Cool. Learn a little about Rembrandt/ his work/ the time period. It's none of that. Not even close.
It's just more of Greenaway's tedious theatrics. It's all talk. No action; no discovery; no story; nada. Multiple characters talk simultaneously so if you were trying to follow the story you could not. And as with all plays each character talks as if there's no one else around.
The 1st half or so is a lot of gynecological detail, childbirth, and crying children. Greenaway supposedly likes strong women so perhaps this is how we're brought into that viewpoint. There's lots of sex talk (and some simulation).
Freeman struts around w/ modern manners, speech, gestures, attitudes - much as if he's on the "Love Actually" set or in some kind of 17th-century gangster movie. The accents are Brit (posh & low), Irish, Polish, Canadian, more. Yeah, who cares? But this is a heavy costume drama so you'd think there's be some consistency.
Toby Jones - the only decent thing about it - is wasted.
So it's really horrible but the best part is that you don't get away with one of Woody Allen's 87 miserable-minutes. This is 2+ hours. And that's not fair anyway: this is way worse than any of Allen's low.
It's just more of Greenaway's tedious theatrics. It's all talk. No action; no discovery; no story; nada. Multiple characters talk simultaneously so if you were trying to follow the story you could not. And as with all plays each character talks as if there's no one else around.
The 1st half or so is a lot of gynecological detail, childbirth, and crying children. Greenaway supposedly likes strong women so perhaps this is how we're brought into that viewpoint. There's lots of sex talk (and some simulation).
Freeman struts around w/ modern manners, speech, gestures, attitudes - much as if he's on the "Love Actually" set or in some kind of 17th-century gangster movie. The accents are Brit (posh & low), Irish, Polish, Canadian, more. Yeah, who cares? But this is a heavy costume drama so you'd think there's be some consistency.
Toby Jones - the only decent thing about it - is wasted.
So it's really horrible but the best part is that you don't get away with one of Woody Allen's 87 miserable-minutes. This is 2+ hours. And that's not fair anyway: this is way worse than any of Allen's low.