The Wall

I like the small scale- fuck, should've said SCOPE, now this mini-review is ruined

Maybe the single location action movie has been done too many times, but I enjoyed it.

The standoff with a nearly supernatural enemy sniper is interesting. But while I appreciate the irony in the ending, its unlikely elements and continuity problems are a definite detraction.

I enjoy the premise a lot because I like when movies have small situations like this. It forces clever writing and good acting in order to be good, and it's difficult to pull off. The direction is fine, the acting is fine, the script is a little wonky, it's a little boring at first but picks up eventually, the ending song is cringey. It isn't scary (it's not meant to be), but it feels a bit like a horror movie in its pacing and how things unfold, which is kinda neat. Entertaining, worth a watch.

Decent performances, but the whole chain of events is so ridiculous and unrealistic that it ruins the whole thing. Just to mention the starting scene... Why are the two idiots only scanning the locations of the bodies. They are on a counter-sniper mission and they are not scanning for locations where a sniper would actually hide, retarted. Also, the direction of fire that killed the people on the ground could most likely be determined from their original position to point to right direction...

The Wall isn't a bad action thriller. I liked the isolated location and small set of characters. The ending was a nice touch.

A nice surprise in how compelling and intense this little war film is. Great lead performance by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

an iraq war-era dive into an all-american hero's headspace, his conscience whispering in his ear as he bleeds out of his physical/psychological Walls and learns to stop building/bombing Walls. it isn't interesting or coherent as anti-imperialist allegory, and the script is trash (the sniper sure loves e. a. poe lmao), but it's a single-location actioner which cares about the minutiae of physical degradation, spatial geography and strategy, which is enough to make absolutely anything watchable.

Who is the good guy and who is the bad guy? In any given movie, that's a pretty basic question. And usually the answer is clear. In The Wall, the answer seems clear at first, too. The good guy is the wounded American soldier. The bad guy is the wickedly accurate Iraqi sniper hunting and haunting him.

Decent premise. Undecent execution. Liman does as good a job he can, but a good builder can't fixed a flawed foundation.

I like how Liman approaches the one-location thriller and applies it to war, but Johnson just doesn't carry the weight the movie needed -- and the mostly dull dialogues also don't help. As far as car and mouse games go, this at least has sober editing and kind of dares with American losing the battle to an unbeatable ex-teacher turned sniper who quotes Frost and Poe while attracting soldiers to his kill zone -- in a way, it's also like Edge of Tomorrow's head-bites-tail narrative.

Liman creates a good atmosphere and good tension, I liked the non-hollywood ending but it is not an amazing watch. Not the best soldier psychology film out there but decent.

When your anti-war movie is ruined by an implausible ending where absurdly "badass" things happen. Aaron did give an incredible performance, tho.

A movie that fascinates despite its limitations. More reviews here : http://movie-freak.be