Review: Man Of Steel

Review 2013 by RD Clark

Title

Man Of Steel

Written by: David S. Goyer

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe, Ayelet Zurer, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon, Antje Traue, Laurence Fishburne, Christopher Meloni

Rated PG-13
Running time: 143 Mins

On a doomed planet, a Jedi Knight scientist defeats a rebellion by a Sith Lord General and launches his newly born son out into the universe. The son goes through many phases of discovery until he finds out who he is, which ends up being, apparently, a mass force of destruction. Too bad for Smallville and Metropolis.

This movie started out pretty well. Cavill is very good as Kent/Superman and Amy Adams is a tenacious Lois Lane. The origin bit went on well and set up the plot perfectly. For most part I was having a good time, watching Crowe and Shannon go at each other. The special effects were second to none.

But there was waaaaayyyy too much shaky cam and out of focus shots; I was getting an eyestrain headache. The score was loud and clamorous, which was unnecessary; the soundtrack handled that fine. There was little joy and too much wanton destruction for my taste and the final battle went on forever, until emotional overload left me unconcerned. Not content with destroying one city, the filmmakers decided to go and trash another one as well. A lack of humor and an overdose of plain meanness left me unsatisfied and I left the theater a bit annoyed with the writers and their lack of respect for the legend.

I’m not going to recommend this. It gets points for looking awesome and starting out well, but it degenerated into a long, vicious and eventually tedious press of brutality. I saw it in 3D, but it didn’t really add much except to the headache. Since this is DC and not Marvel, there were no post screen credits, so you can fly when they roll.

Flytrap rating: 4/10

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