Reviews

I'm open to all kinds of teaching about life values, positivity, and similar. But I only made it about twenty minutes through this movie. I turned it off when he said that financial wealth and spirituality are basically one and the same. Not only is that an insult to poor people today, but by this measure almost every religious leader in human history must not have been spiritual after all.

The man preaches a very similar message to televangelists, except he specifically says that he deserves the money, because his message makes people feel good.

"Imagine a world where the people who gave you the most spiritual message received the most money", he oozes to an adoring congregation and their wallets.

The whole movie seems nothing more than a marketing vehicle to sell ⎯ and emphasis on the 'sell' ⎯ his message, in its various formats. Other than the selling his message is nothing new. It's 'the universe loves you' and 'you should love yourself more and think about your own desires more'.

As a movie the whole thing is pretty hokey. The acting is unconvincing, the characters are stereotypes, and the script is riddled with clichés.

I give it one star solely for his introductory line, which was actually very good: "Everything we do is either motivated by love or by fear". If only that message had been further explored, instead of the rapid sidestep into patronizing false humility and money-grabbing.

Truth and integrity are exceptionally rare these days, especially coming from anything in the media. Director Cassie Jaye is to be commended for presenting such an honest perspective of the issues she covers here.

The Red Pill movie is an exploration of the Men's Right Movement and features interviews of people from both sides of the fence. Cassie is a quietly personable interviewer, rather than being provocative or hogging the screen. She never asks leading questions or uses other sneaky interview tactics, instead allowing her subjects to speak openly about their viewpoints. She then contrasts those views with one another and gives you factual tidbits. In doing this she has created a highly thought-provoking movie, no matter what your current opinion may be.

And that seems to be the point of the movie: to get you to think and to arouse your curiosity.

This is by no means a hit piece on feminism (or the MRA). Women's rights are spoken of with respect and sensitivity and there is no one promoting violence or sexism against women. In the end, as with all of the best movies, this was about our shared humanity. People spoke about their hopes and pains and their personal journeys.

It was poignant to see Erin Pizzey, the founder of the world's first women's shelter, speak about her ostracization by the feminist movement. Although it's not included in the movie, Erin had to flee her home country under armed guard in the '70s after multiple death threats from feminists, who killed her family's dog and threatened her children. All because she said that women were also capable of being violent. (Government stats show that approximately half of domestic violence is against men). Erin wanted to offer shelter to men as well and because of this she has been banned from being a part of feminist organizations.

However, as I said before, this movie is a brief lifting-of-the-lid of the MRA and is not meant to be an answer to feminist dogma. As such, there are still many issues it leaves unaddressed. But that's OK. You can only say so much in one movie. And besides, I prefer this personal exploration of Cassie's, rather than a hard hitting statistical take-down, because it's much more accessible and relatable for the average person.

Of course, Cassie does reveal official facts and figures for the topics she investigates and many viewers will find them eye-opening. These facts won't be popular or comfortable, but the truth rarely is. At least, at first.

This movie was just okay. Ironically, it suffers from a parallel problem with the climate change cause it champions. Although movies about scenery can be beautiful and awe-inspiring, people care most about stories of other people. Yet the story of the two main players in this piece are under-told. We never really get much background on either of them. They're introduced perfunctorily, as though by resume: This guy does this; that guy does that.

We do get to see some of their preparation and a bit of the training, mostly for writer/director/star Sebastian Copeland ⎯ in fact, almost entirely for him. But we never really get to learn who they are as people. Sebastian talks a little about his photography background and the fact that climate change is important to him. But it's simply not presented in a very compelling way. There is too much "telling" and not enough "showing".

This is true for all of the personal stories. For example, he mentions in narration the problems faced by the Inuit and we do see them briefly, but there is no investigation of their history, or their individual struggles, or anything like that. We are just briefly given a few factual tidbits. Actually, even this part of the movie seemed more about Sebastian than about them. He told us that they blessed him and although that's an honor, it did seem like he was trying to tell us, "Look at how well they regard me!" Perhaps I'm wrong, but the best documentary makers know how to get out of the way when need be and show the stories of other people.

There are some technical issues with the filming itself. Other than the formal interviews, every single interior scene is out of focus. There is also a bit of rolling shutter on the outdoor scenes. The latter is no big deal, but the poor focus was distracting for me.

Ultimately, the movie is a bit like looking through an acquaintance's holiday photos. The scenes may be stunning ⎯ and they are ⎯ but there is little to truly draw us in to the human element.

This will be a short review, because it's easy to summarize the good and no-so-good aspects of this movie.

The acting is good ⎯ better than typical Hollywood fare. The cinematography is excellent.

The plot is quite predictable. That's not a major gripe, since I mostly watch martial arts movies for the skill of the fighters and cleverness of the choreography. It's like a kind of violent ballet when done well. But this plot lazily borrows from movies from decades ago and doesn't improve on them.

Speaking of fighting, the fight choreography is okay. I expected better. The one-on-one sequences in the second half of the movie are very good. However, the multi-person fights aren't so great. You get a lot of the cliché of a group of bad guys attacking mostly one at a time with the others busting a move in the background while waiting their turn. Plus, the fighting concepts themselves are a bit repetitious. I have definitely seen far more imagination given to fight sequences and especially use of the set during the fight. The same things have been done better in other movies.

Another issue with this movie was its inaccurate depiction of certain aspects of the period. The biggest problem was that they've taken modern views, concerns, and male-female interactions and injected them into a movie set in a much different time. Younger people may not pick up on this much, if at all, but when you're aware of the social mores of the day the mistakes stand out like a fart at a funeral.

So, what you have is a well-filmed movie with so-so fighting, predictable plot, and unrealistic characterizations. It could have been much better ⎯ like the first Ip Man movie, for example.