Eddington 4K 2025

Another failure for Ari Aster — this time, a satirical one.

I'll get to Ari Aster's first art horror films, which are most highly praised, soon. In the meantime, I have to admit that, judging by all appearances, the director doesn't really succeed in other genres. As in the case of All Is Lost, the same problems are present here, and the director seems to have learned nothing — a second consecutive box office flop will now clearly sober up investors and, I hope, the author himself.

For the second time in a row, Aster is trying something new (which is commendable, of course), and for the second time in a row, he is making the same mistakes, stepping on the same rake. For the second time in a row, we have megalomania—a horse-length and drawn-out running time. For the second time in a row, we have a plot that, if not for a short film, would easily fit into a standard 1:50, but not into 2.5 hours. For the second time in a row, we have a loose and sluggish script and the absence of someone with editing scissors.

This time, the director tries his hand at satire, vainly clinging to the long-gone train of pandemic, BLM, and so on, and so forth. The director only partially succeeds in mocking all this ugliness. Everything looks painfully contrived, unnatural, and heavy-handed. Aster simply doesn't feel the material, and it seems as if he himself hasn't decided what to make of his own script. The film refuses to become a coherent whole, falling apart into plot fragments and scenes — some successful, some not so much. There are some funny moments, but they are not enough to make up for 2.5 hours of frankly stalled action.
The film is neither good nor bad — it is ordinary and standardly professional. There are a couple of decent shots, but that's about it. In the finale, we are even treated to some action—as if the director woke up and decided to perk up—but it's only a small consolation. Something seems to be happening in the film, and there are nuances at times, but it all somehow fails to come together as a whole.

The actors aren't great either — the cast is excellent, but Phoenix, Pascal, and Stone have nothing to play with. They're standard characters, except maybe Phoenix's is a little more interesting, but he was much more entertaining in Bo. It's unclear why they brought in old Pedro, who appears for literally 15 minutes with rather banal lines — there's simply nowhere for the actor to shine. Emma Stone is also here for a short time, and she essentially has a fairly typical role — she's already played this type of character before, and better. Austin Butler gave a funny performance — here he was a perfect fit for the character and image, but again, he only appeared in a couple of short scenes. Of course, it's nice to see them all, but you expect hellish excitement from such a cast, and here, at best, it's just a spark.

Actually, the same can be said about the film as about the actors. The approach is interesting — go wild, break away, create drive and twist the absurdity to the maximum, or go for subtlety and grace. But neither of these is particularly evident here — Aster clearly lacks talent and has taken on a burden that he is unable to carry without stumbling at the first hurdle. The result is yet another “Babylon-Amsterdam,” joining the ranks of films with bouts of megalomania and pretensions to the highest spheres.