There was a reasonable amount of buzz going in to this movie with a trailer which did a great job of building anticipation. However, this has to be one of the biggest disparities between a trailer and the actual movie that there has ever been. The trailer was considered, tense and left the viewer with a great sense of unease. The actual movie was formulaic, poorly written and ultimately forgettable. Scorsese can usually be relied upon to deliver tight, focused movies. However, the direction here felt very inept. The use of flashbacks and dream sequences bordered on the comical and the overuse of CGI sapped the emotion out of the film. They were relied upon to convey the back story of the main character, that of the death of his wife and his experiences in World War Two. However, this reliance on flashbacks just served to slow down the movie for little purpose. It got to the point where we no longer care about the main character’s motivations and just want the present day story to resolve itself. (more…)