I just saw Chronicle, I can’t yet say whether it was good or bad, but what disturbs me is that I’ve run through my head almost the exact scenarios presented in the film a million times throughout my life - as recently as this week, and as far back as 1998.
I consider the film to be an accurate representation of how those types of people would react in those situations.
The fudge factor was low overall, but it was very apparent that huge chunks were truncated for convenience and the film felt short as a result. Either there’s another 20+ minutes on the cutting room floor, or the writer just skipped over shit he didn’t feel like dealing with.
The first half of the film threw in oddball philosophical quotes, which seemed to imply a depth to one of the main characters, but was never elaborated on, and in fact seemed completely antithetic to his personality. I actually wished it had been elaborated on, seeing that the last half of the film seemed to me to be the perfect time to focus more on those philosophies.
As a result of this, I felt the movie was good, but not good enough for anyone to bother with a full re-cut, which is a shame, because I’m pretty sure the movie could have been completely amazing with a little more work, since its glaringly obvious that this movie is an american spin on Akira. Not nearly as good, but not bad either.