Plot: A victim of a brutal attack finds a unique outlet during his recovery process.

The anticipation of a new Robert Zemeckis film seems to have almost disappeared as it has been a long time since his last big hit, which I would consider to be Cast Away from 2000.
Since then, he has made some solid hits such as The Polar Express and Flight and some solid critical hits such as The Walk.


But he has come nowhere near matching his efforts from the Back To The Future trilogy, Forrest Gump or Who Framed Roger Rabbit.


For me, I am always still up a new Zemeckis as I can see he is still looking for another timeless classic to add to his back catalogue. I really liked The Polar Express and The Walk and found Beowulf and A Christmas Carol to be decent. However, I do feel he missed the mark with the disappointing Flight and Allied which I felt to be rather flat despite being well-crafted.


With this latest project, we get a pretty strange story to be portrayed on film. To explain it on paper would be tricky. But while I still felt the whole experience to be pretty odd, strange and unique, I managed to rather enjoy once I got on board with the structure.
There's a pretty cool opening sequence and then once the major development happens, I think like myself, most people will try and work out if this unique story is going to work.
After that, I think it's just a matter of seeing if you'll get on board with this or just see it as a bit of a mess.


What I was seeing was an intriguing story that gripped me, with a strong performance by lead Steve Carell, some good CGI sequences in the fantasy part of the film, a strong and memorable score by Zemeckis' regular composer Alan Silvestri and many vintage Zemeckis moments.


As mentioned before I think Steve Carell gives a great performance and gave us a character with great sympathy and a troubled personality that has a lot of content to work with for the writing team.
I felt his chemistry with Leslie Mann was sweet and infectious and Mann herself did a good job as the main support.
There were also noticeable good supporting performances by Gwendoline Christie, Janelle Monae, Eiza Gonzalez and Diane Kruger.


I didn't feel there were any notable negatives from a technical or story-telling aspect. I think the strangeness of this story is what is preventing it from reaching out to a mainstream audience.
It almost feels like an arthouse project being given a budget closer to that of a blockbuster, and those types of films I'm always up for.


So while I don't think the story fully worked, I still managed to enjoy it. It has enough of that Zemeckis film-making magic to get invested in a story that has a charm and heart to it with a strong leading performance with many solid outings from the supporting side of the cast.
If you like the majority of the directors previous films, then I think you can find enough in here to at the very least admire it.


Rating: 7/10