Sadly Over-hyped

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Let me start by saying most of the bad ratings, as the great ones, come from people who don't know the facts. If you don't care about the real story behind the film, you might enjoy it and think it's good enough, but otherwise I'd avoid it. I've seen other reviewers say this is not plausible and they are right, this movie gets a lot of details wrong, however the main details are right. There was a mid-air collision, one of the victim's relatives found his own daughter's body and he did end up killing the air traffic controller he deemed responsible for it. While I'm not related to any of the victims of this terrible tragedy, I think this film takes some liberties that can be really wrong and even hurtful. Go get informed about the facts first and you'll see the many shortcomings of this film.

Well, I never considered Arnold to be a bad actor. He was perfect in T2 and Total Recall, two really good movies. But starring in a drama doesn't automatically raise the artistic quality of the performance. The story is said to be inspired by true events and maybe this is how it all happened, but it's nonetheless surprisingly devoid of substance. And while Jacob does a pretty good job in conveying his anguish, it's difficult to feel anything at all from Arnold's performance.

I should say from the start that it was gratifying to watch the depth of Arnold's performance... he plumbed down deeper than I've ever seen him emotionally. That having been said, the plot was mediocre and virtually every character lacked credibility. I had a very difficult time believing that these people would behave this way under these circumstances especially at certain key points in the story. I felt like I was watching cartoon characters from a rather disappointing graphic novel.If there was any takeaway, it came far too late in my tedious journey and seemed like an afterthought.

It had a good and promising concept and the first two thirds of the film were really good and intriguing. Arnold Schwarzenegger proved that with the right material he can actually act as he delivered quite a decent performance here, one that works more than just on one note. I think he tried out for an Oscar with that role. I did not like Scoot McNairy and thought he gave an unconvincing and bad performance. Maggie Grace was okay with what she was given to. The direction was fine but a bit monotonic. The screenplay was fine. All of that until the last third, or 15 minutes in particular when the film totally turned its direction and went all over the place. All the motivations were thrown away and it became very unbelievable, technically and morally. A real shame, as it really could have been a solid character drama with many good values. Oh and its one of the prime examples of really bad and misleading marketing.