Not the best, but up near the top. It hit lots of marks in the 007 franchise with new creative twists. The best one for this writer is still Casino Royale, doctored by Paul Haggis (which by the way, has a very clear and distinct four acts — for those three-acts pundits). One thing you have to focus on if you ever get to write a 007 pic: the opening sequence. This one was very creative and well executed by Sam Mendes. I’ll offer a more detailed breakdown later in the archive section when I get it on live streaming. It does not have the depth of Lincoln or Zero Dark Thirty, however it is not kitsch entertainment. It’s a great experience on many levels: the production value; the dramatic sequence; telegraphs; dangling causes; and a host of other tools to hold our interest.

I would like to say that this is a well-structured, masterful screenplay, with great sequence structure, unity of action, characters, and a celebration of a defining moment in U.S. history, but I can’t. Don’t get me wrong, it is all that. It also lasts 2h and 40min and does not let the ball drop. I don’t think a single frame is wasted. But what it amount to is an example of doing the wrong thing right.

You see, in life it is better to do the right thing wrong than to do the wrong thing right. The former you can fix; the latter will always be wrong, no matter how much expertise you bring to the table. If you read the article below, you’ll find more about why everyone working on cinema and TV should be aware of the reach of their work and the ethical and moral implications thereof.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/letter-kathryn-bigelow-zero-dark-thirty

Anybody who works in the media, specially in cinema and TV, should have a superhuman awareness of the impact that their work can have. The impact on society, on truth, on the low-information voter, the warmongers, the legislators, and even the well-informed citizen.

What the film portrays thematically is that torture is okay. Torture is what lead to Bin Laden and what is helping us ‘win’ this war. Of course not only this is completely false and all the facts have been well researched, but it leaves out a whole lot of untold stories. The Best Documentary Oscar-Winner for ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’ (2007), Alex Gibney, has also openly criticized the filmmakers for the way torture is portrayed in this movie.

The clear line of action is there, the characters are there, the dramatic line, the intensity, the comedic relief at crucial points. It is 2h40min, I was very tired, and it kept me awake. Of course, this film had a huge leverage from this recent historical event, It’s called ‘Mental Real Estate’, which you can check here.

I would like to say that it is a great movie, but I can’t. It is, rather, a great example of great craftsmanship, of all involved, used for the wrong reasons. It is an example of how we cannot separate skill from the ethical and moral implications of our work, like the mythological pale criminal, who has the courage of the knife, but not the courage of the blood to see what he has done.

The more I watch over the years, the more I’m convinced that no one knows the importance of a driving dramatic question in the Aristotelian sense than Steven Spielberg and/or the writers who are hired to work for him. The Third act division is clear, and not only that, the sense of humor, the vivid characters and their own quirks. Everyone is having a ball and so is the audience. If that’s what you want to write (which happen to be my favorite style of dramatic structure for filmmaking), please watch Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Jaws, and films with a similar design and try to find what’s the main dramatic question. That question is the answer to the sentence “This is a film about…” Remember, there are only two kinds of stories, either someone wants something and is having a hard time getting it, or someone is running away from something and is having a hard time escaping from it.