Review of Green Book (2018) by Ahmedaiman1999 — 06 Jan 2019

The best work of Peter Farrelly's career as a solo project after 24 years of sharing the director chair with his brother. And a reminder that Viggo Mortensen has never won an Oscar.

I mean... how on earth you people say that Green Book is a feel-good movie?! This is so dark and infuriating!

Seriously though, despite its heavy themes, this movie is, surprisingly, supremely delightful to watch. Partly, thanks to the electrifying chemistry between Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, whose equally phenomenal performances prove that they are two of the most talented actors working today. But largely, thanks to Peter Farrelly's nifty direction. Not only has he shown maturity as a director, but Farrelly also completely understood how to blend his sense of humour with a dramatic movie, and hence more earnest tone and more serious subject matter, way more serious! If he sticks with this refreshing style of filmmaking, and collaborate with excellent screenwriters, such as the writers of the screenplay of this movie, I bet that he will be one of the most popular directors in the coming years. The way he handles his performers, or shots a comedic scene here were really out of the ordinary.

The relatively deliberate pace couldn't have been more challenging for Peter Farrelly to stick with a particular tone, and find balance for this movie, but besides his palpable capability of doing so, the script, which he also co-wrote, offered sincere and genuine smart dialogues, and extremely likable reasonably fleshed-out characters, made this task way much more easier. Let alone the astonishing performances from the entire cast.

The screenplay is what to blame, however, for these two points I took away from my rating for this movie.

First, there is an action Mortensen's character, Tony Lip, take at the beginning of the movie that didn't add anything to the movie. This action also had some consequences that took some time. Adding insult to injury, this action, along with its consequences, was nothing but a cheap trick to make the viewers make a wrong judgment about the character.

Secondly, there was an abrupt change of mind made by the same character that, however understandable it might be, I still found it hard to swallow.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the illogically symmetric pattern of the storytelling; the plot keeps moving forward in a very unrealistic by making every phase in the movie seemingly predictable. It's safe to say that a movie with a fairly familiar themes like this one can easily suffer from such problem.

That said, Green Book is undoubtedly one of the most 2018 movies that I've enjoyed watching. Peter Farrelly miraculously managed to make a movie that tackles such sore themes, a breezy crowd-pleaser.