A small waste of time but still a waste. "American Dream" never gets close to the dream, it only shows the nightmarish way hard-working people have
to go through in order to built something valuable and iomportant in their lives, in this case two friends (Michiel Huisman and Luke Bracey) who have to
make a business with the Russian mob and the bad guy played by Nick Stahl in order to have their project working. Spielberg's regular cinematographer
Janusz Kaminski signs this as a director and producer, and what a disjointed wreck this is. I wonder what happened to him in opting for making this -
and it gets weirder that the film took ten years to finally get a release.
While the actors are all enjoyable and good to watch (specially Stahl as he always delivers good villains, "Bully" and "Sin City" to mention a few), but the inconsistent, dumb and painful screenplay doesn't help anyway in coming up with something memorable or worth seeing. The two friends and their girlfriends go through a lenghty and violent scenario where Stahl gives them a time to collect his money on a certain deadline but instead of waiting for it he and his henchmen keep on threatning them every hour. He's worst than a bank calling every ten minutes wanting to know if the debt was paid or when.
And was there a point in opening the film with a tough situation by one of the women back in Russia, to later on return to that scenario in the middlwe of the movie, explain what the situation ended and still we don't get any resolution? I figured out it was a way to say that the girlfriends (one of them, at least) were far more brave and cold-blooded than those good-looking wimpy guys.
It's heavily cliched, annoying and jumpy, has been done before and better. 4/10.
While the actors are all enjoyable and good to watch (specially Stahl as he always delivers good villains, "Bully" and "Sin City" to mention a few), but the inconsistent, dumb and painful screenplay doesn't help anyway in coming up with something memorable or worth seeing. The two friends and their girlfriends go through a lenghty and violent scenario where Stahl gives them a time to collect his money on a certain deadline but instead of waiting for it he and his henchmen keep on threatning them every hour. He's worst than a bank calling every ten minutes wanting to know if the debt was paid or when.
And was there a point in opening the film with a tough situation by one of the women back in Russia, to later on return to that scenario in the middlwe of the movie, explain what the situation ended and still we don't get any resolution? I figured out it was a way to say that the girlfriends (one of them, at least) were far more brave and cold-blooded than those good-looking wimpy guys.
It's heavily cliched, annoying and jumpy, has been done before and better. 4/10.