MOVIE REVIEW: ARRIVAL

Article By: Sean Hannon 

Arrival is the critically acclaimed film by the director Denis Villeneuve, known for other pieces such as Sicario and Enemy. The film stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner as the two main characters. The movie is very plot oriented while nearly everything else takes a back seat to it. That may seem like a negative point, but the plot is interesting enough to hold its own.

Summary

Dr. Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, is one of the world's top linguists with many books on the topic of language. She is teaching a class when news breaks of alien objects landing in 12 spots in the world. It is discovered that these are space ships. The government calls for Louise to try and translate their language to communicate. The plot becomes very complicated from there and I won't leak any spoilers!

Positives

The more I think about this film the more I like it. First of all the plot of Arrival is very interesting, I would not like say anything too specific about it to ruin your experience prior to tuning in! The characterization mainly focuses on Louise Banks as she is mostly the character that the plot surrounds. The entire process of translation is interesting and always keeps the viewer engaged. The viewer knows that something can go wrong, for example, many government officials don't trust the aliens and would prefer to take up military action against them. There is also an abundance of foreshadowing of events which makes the plot feel very odd up until the end(in the best way possible).

Negatives

As previously stated, the movie is plot oriented so almost everything else takes a back seat. If you have come to this movie expecting the War of the Worlds you will be horribly disappointed. Most other characters are uncharacterised which can make them very uninteresting. Some of the cinematography is off, for example, some scenes are completly out of focus for no legitimate reason. For the first half of the movie, the plot seems very run of the mill but it speeds up at the end so keep in mind that the movie can be slow at first.

Overall

If you have come to this movie for anything but the plot you should not watch. But if you are somewhat interested in the plot, I cannot recommend the film more. It is a masterpiece in plot that will make you think about the movie for days on end.