Gravity Movie Review

Gravity, for me, is a hard movie to nail down. The visuals, drama and the acting were some of the best I have seen all year. But the characters were not fleshed out well, there was very little development, and at the end I simply did not feel like I knew the characters at all. For me, that is a loss because for the drama and the stakes to mean something, ANYTHING, I need to know these people.

If you look at the IMDB page for ‘Gravity’, you will see 7 performers listed. 5 of those are voice performances, with the only two actually appearing on screen being George Clooney as Matt Kowalski, and Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone.

Clooney is good as the charming, confident, Kowalski. They try to give him a little development by having him spin yarns in a folksy kind of way, but I could not help feeling like he could have been played by just about anyone else that carried a little swagger, and the movie would not have changed. That’s not a knock on him as much as it is the character. Just a tad one dimensional, but he made the best of it.

Bullock is asked to carry this film much in the same way Tom Hanks was asked to carry most of ‘Castaway’.  As we all know, Hanks was masterful in that film and I had my doubts that Bullock could pull the same thing off. I should not have worried. She is in top form in Gravity, and bears the weight of the film with no problem.

Stone is strong in sections, weak in others, and even with the lack of character development, very human throughout. The main difference between Hanks’ character in “Castaway” and Bullock’s here is that with the former we knew who he was. What made him tick. Most importantly, why we should care. He had stakes other than survival, he had something to live for. Bullock’s Ryan Stone is not afforded the same level of detai,l so I felt myself a little disengaged from her, but that does not reflect on her performance as she was great. It was the writers who dropped the ball there.

The real star of this film is the location and visuals. I had the pleasure of seeing it on a Cinemark XD screen, and while it is not quite IMAX, it is very close and really helped make me feel as if I was there. At times I even had to look away as the 3D combined with the motion of the Earth in the background caused me to feel a tinge of motion sickness and vertigo. That is not a bad thing at all, it really helped sell the situation to me. ‘Gravity’ really is the closest 99.99% of us will ever get to being in space, and it was beautiful.

The direction of Alfonso Cuaron is solid. The opening scene from start until the first cut is, I believe, almost 14 minutes and it is glorious. Cuaron handled it deftly, using the freedom of space with people and objects floating into and out of frame to replace cutting away for close-ups and changing angles. It worked to get you right into the action and by the end of the sequence, the stakes are clear. I cannot wait for the Blu Ray so I can see some of the behind-the-scenes on how they managed to pull this off so seamlessly.

In closing, ‘Gravity’ is a solid ‘Action-Drama’. (Yes, I made that up … it cannot qualify as a Character-Drama as the characters are not the real stars, the action is.) I recommend seeing it and when you do, see it in 3D. There is no point otherwise. The 3D  is what makes this film shine. The cast is good, bordering on great at times, and the story, while sparse, is entertaining.

If $10 is the full price of admission, ‘Gravity‘ is worth $8.50.

 

Scott Macumber

Contributor Scott Macumber is a fan both of film itself, as well as the technology propelling the medium forward, such as 3D.

www.TheHollywoodOutsider.com