Rogue One (2016)
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 133m
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen
Synopsis:
The Empire forces a fugitive scientist to complete his work on the Death Star, but he works a flaw into the design that the Rebel Alliance can later exploit, and his orphaned daughter does exactly that.
Review:
The precedents are not good for franchise spin-offs, but this particular edition, which acts as a curtain-raiser to A New Hope much as Wagner's Das Rheingold did to Die Walküre, is an egregious exception. It is tautly written, with none of that hard-on-the-ear dialogue that plagued the Lucas prequels, and has a built-in sense of foreclosure to it that sharpens the pathos and heroism surrounding the characters, putting one in mind of other great doomed commando missions in cinema, The Wild Bunch, or even The Alamo! The picture is full of other nods to A New Hope, such as the duo from the Cantina bar ('Hey, watch yourself!'), who presumably make it on the next transport out of Jedha before it is nuked, cockpit shots, sound effects, and most strikingly the posthumous appearances of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher. In short, it's a thrilling adventure, with humour, and a trio of characters who, for all that they are carbon copies of Ridley, Boyega and Isaac's in The Force Awakens, actually seem three-dimensional.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 133m
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen
Synopsis:
The Empire forces a fugitive scientist to complete his work on the Death Star, but he works a flaw into the design that the Rebel Alliance can later exploit, and his orphaned daughter does exactly that.
Review:
The precedents are not good for franchise spin-offs, but this particular edition, which acts as a curtain-raiser to A New Hope much as Wagner's Das Rheingold did to Die Walküre, is an egregious exception. It is tautly written, with none of that hard-on-the-ear dialogue that plagued the Lucas prequels, and has a built-in sense of foreclosure to it that sharpens the pathos and heroism surrounding the characters, putting one in mind of other great doomed commando missions in cinema, The Wild Bunch, or even The Alamo! The picture is full of other nods to A New Hope, such as the duo from the Cantina bar ('Hey, watch yourself!'), who presumably make it on the next transport out of Jedha before it is nuked, cockpit shots, sound effects, and most strikingly the posthumous appearances of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher. In short, it's a thrilling adventure, with humour, and a trio of characters who, for all that they are carbon copies of Ridley, Boyega and Isaac's in The Force Awakens, actually seem three-dimensional.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 133m
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen
Synopsis:
The Empire forces a fugitive scientist to complete his work on the Death Star, but he works a flaw into the design that the Rebel Alliance can later exploit, and his orphaned daughter does exactly that.
Review:
The precedents are not good for franchise spin-offs, but this particular edition, which acts as a curtain-raiser to A New Hope much as Wagner's Das Rheingold did to Die Walküre, is an egregious exception. It is tautly written, with none of that hard-on-the-ear dialogue that plagued the Lucas prequels, and has a built-in sense of foreclosure to it that sharpens the pathos and heroism surrounding the characters, putting one in mind of other great doomed commando missions in cinema, The Wild Bunch, or even The Alamo! The picture is full of other nods to A New Hope, such as the duo from the Cantina bar ('Hey, watch yourself!'), who presumably make it on the next transport out of Jedha before it is nuked, cockpit shots, sound effects, and most strikingly the posthumous appearances of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher. In short, it's a thrilling adventure, with humour, and a trio of characters who, for all that they are carbon copies of Ridley, Boyega and Isaac's in The Force Awakens, actually seem three-dimensional.