Review of Woman in Gold (2015) by Ydnar4 — 02 Jul 2015

Woman in Gold is directed by Simon Curtis and stars Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. The film tells the true story of Maria Altmann (played by Mirren) an Austrian woman who fought to reclaim Gustav Klimt’s now famous portrait of her aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer, which was taken by the Nazis before World War II began.

Reynolds plays Randy Schoenberg, Altmann’s lawyer. Daniel Bruhl and Katie Holmes have supporting roles in this film but are fairly underused. Mirren and Reynolds’ performances are really the only two in this film that matter.

They are really the only two essential characters. Mirren was great throughout the whole film playing a woman who just wants the one thing that reminds her of the life she once had. I have not seen many of Mirren’s performances because she generally stars in lesser known projects that don’t always get a lot of attention, but her performance in this film interests me to see some of her other projects.

Ryan Reynolds is better in this film than I expected and hopefully he will be able to able to continue to improve with Self/Less which comes out this month and more importantly when he plays Deadpool next year.

At the beginning it looked like he may have been miscast because he seemed to be dragging down the dialogue. It is so hard not to associate him with the romantic comedies that he is known for. However as the movie goes along he improves steadily and by the end I thought it was one of his greatest performances.

Woman in Gold is certainly a slow film and the story is fairly dull. I think the film could have been a bit more inspirational and the movie goes by quick without really delivering a memorable plot. There is also little development with the characters and I felt like I hardly knew them even when the movie ended.

Woman in Gold is certainly not a terrible movie but will not be suitable for a casual movie fan.