Alexander Schulin's stylish production is alert to the opera's shifting moods and keeps the many arias dramatically lively without resorting to contrived action.
But at its best "Traitor" feels less like the usual rushed, contrived action-travelogue than like an intimately scaled drama of ambiguous motives and fretful moral dilemmas.
Bruce Willis has crashed and burned twice this year with the contrived action-comedy Bandits and the soggy PoW flick Hart's War.
The story is carelessly hermetic; its twists are signalled from miles away, and the contrived action seems to take place under glass.
By Richard Brody January 12 , 2018Jaume Collet-Serra's laughably contrived action film, starring Liam Neeson on a Metro-North train, proves that distinctive traits in a director are not necessarily a mark of artistry.
While there are a series of thrilling sequences in this novel (involving Harriet and Hely's attempt to steal a cobra, their efforts to throw the snake into Danny's car, and Harriet's investigation of Farish's secret drug stash), these scenes feel like outtakes from a highly contrived action movie.
He allowed the media frame to shift quickly to the missteps of the administration rather than emphasizing the underhanded, contrived, and racist actions of Andrew Breitbart and his fellow travelers at Fox News.
MacMillan's over-the-top, dunked-in-gold décor, by Nicholas Georgiadis, was obviously Martins's negative model for his own, and MacMillan's thrill-a-minute dramaturgy was apparently his counterexample in contriving the action.
Such innovations as are found in the nouveau roman can best show their value in their influence on traditional novelists, who may be persuaded to observe more closely and be wary of the seductions of swift action, contrived relationships, and neat resolutions.
Or, conversely, is the grinding tedium of this film good news for our side, evidence of the awesome might of Western popular culture, which can turn even the most intransigent and bloodthirsty real-world villains into fodder for busy, contrived and lifeless action thrillers?
When the women take lovers, steal babies, cast spells, their actions feel contrived.
