this might be the most important example of style and enchantment allowing a lack of greater narrative purpose or through lines to not matter too much. you become attached to this blurry concept of someone being put down by the powers that be, the fascistic elements emanating from increasingly rigid power structures and otherings, and what that one person's actions mean towards 'fighting the good fight'.

who cares if the primary enemy is incompetently written, or if any lenses have been sharpened and saturated to the point where the lines between real, cgi, and a.i. no longer mean anything, or if there's enough pre-assumed about the world as a backdrop that you actually wish they told instead of showed. the main two stars are likable, it's eye-wateringly expensive-looking, and the dynamics are understandable—if not uncomfortably realistic, of two friends who are inextricably linked, despite one's willingness to nudge power structures and the other's unwillingness to believe that the people they're desperately trying to cozy themselves around could intend anything but the best for them (and i suppose assuming that their rhetoric could never harm those 'others').

it's sickening once i look deeper, that there could be such emotion that still gets riled up in me seeing it all come together, when i know the frame, the real-life structures that built it and encourage its blasé-ness for the sake of their bottom lines, are so terrifyingly venomous. but that's the thing right? this is how populism works. if you can paint a semi-heartfelt message on a pile of overwrought, repackaged rubble, you can turn anything into something workably beautiful.