visually arresting, interesting production design, glorious close-ups of an overacting lead actor, it all amounts to pretty much nothing. a very pretty nothing, though. it would have been an amazing short film as it relies entirely on atmosphere and the sketchiest of disjointed plot scenes, but at almost 2 hours it overplays this hand. at around the halfway mark i thought that almost any of the previous scenes could have been cut without the movie losing anything. there was also a "maybe the kitchen sink too" approach to the visual (over)style too; at some point i uncharitably asked myself if there was a direct correlation between the number of scenes that made the final cut and a list of images and stylistic choices brainstormed in advance. despite this (or maybe because of a certain fatigue), there was no particularly memorable shot or scene. i've seen it praised for being an amazing homage to the 70s and 80s, which sounded great, but here is the thing: this is such an 80s movie that it totally feels like watching an 80s movie to the point where one forgets it was made in 2010... and once i forgot it was not, i was no longer impressed with the meta-aspect of it. it probably plays better when high. note: it features the slowest escape scene i've seen, possibly the slowest in movie history, *hyperbole alert* possibly the slowest imaginable outside of parodies.