Into the Wild
Dir: Sean Penn
2007
**
I really like Sean Penn as a director, so I was hugely disappointed when I saw his 2007 film Into the Wild. The scenery is beautiful and Penn's composition is great but the film is riddled with slow-mo/speedup/overexposure cuts and more camera cliques than you can shake a stick at. At one point our protagonist stands on top of a mountain with his arms out in a spinning camera shot to show he has space and freedom. It's a bit cheap and basic. There was another scene whereby he eats an apple then looks directly at the camera and smiles, showing us that he has enjoyed his apple, I can't list all of these little things that bugged me about this film otherwise I'll get angry. That's what the film made me feel, angry! Christopher Candless is an unlikable character, so maybe Emile Hirsch was a good choice to play him as he is an unlikable actor (he has since grown on me slightly) but that's the problem with the story (or at least the film), I couldn't give a damn about this little brat. There are plenty of films where I've not liked the main character but I have liked the film, this is a huge oversight by Penn, no matter how successful the book was. The supporting cast are also on bad form, the acting is at best, lazy, apart from the truly great performance from Hal Holbrook who was overlooked at the Oscars. It's been a while since I've seen a film so far up its own bottom that I've got so wound up. One star for the scenery and 1 star for Holbrook who is the only thing worth watching this for. Two and a half hours of quite the boring biopic of a selfish, self-centered, immature and quite irritating person, in the wild.