Shadow in the Cloud is a late World War 2 drama set around the Japanese conflict. It crow bars into it the idea of real gremlins sabotaging the airforce. It is clearly conceived as a vehicle for Chloe Grace Moretz, who ably holds the thing together emotionally and in its action sequences.
It's another example of contemporary film making that attempts to turn the tables on your expectations of what a female led drama can be. Whereas war films would once have beeen well written with heroically competent male characters with the female parts, if there are any at all, grossly underwritten clichés, mere ciphers of femininity. This film lazily swaps those gender tropes around, with a heroically competent central female character surrounded by a group of thinly written masculine caricatures. Male bimbos all, who are hopelessly inadequate.This makes it just as insulting and untruthful as it's misogynistic predecessors.
Despite it being tautly filmed and well acted, the essential incongruity of its essential premises drags it down. It's also unable to really get behind the many things it appears to want to be. Is it a World War 2 drama, a feminist subversion of role expectations or a comic book war fantasy? Never entirely succeeding in being any of them.
All of which feels a bit of a shame, as Moretz does more than demonstrate she has the acting chops to hold this patently ludicrous film scenario together. Let's hope no one thinks this worthy of a sequel. But as it was produced by the Fast & Furious franchise, that maybe a faint hope.
CARROT REVIEW - 3/8
No comments:
Post a Comment