Film Review - Mank (2020)

 

Mank is the newest film directed by David Fincher and written by his late father Jack and concerns Herman Makiewicz (Gary Oldman) who is hired by Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to write a draft script for his newest film project but this tale has been long brewing in Mank’s mind and the road to it is a roadmap through his own history in 1930s Hollywood.

 

Mank was a movie I was very keen to see mainly due to it being the return of Mr Fincher to the directors chair on a movie since Gone Girl in 2014 and I was hopeful that he would deliver another rousing movie like he did with Gone Girl that year and 2011’s criminally underrated Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptation.

 

Sadly I must say with a degree of sadness that this movie left me a little flat and a fair bit disappointed but before I delve more into that I want to delve more into what did work for me.

 

And that is surely Mr Fincher’s way with a camera, his direction is fantastic and along with the costumes/production design/sound/music and editing mounts a very nice production and a lot of the time I was watching this film I found myself once more admiring Mr Fincher’s craftsmanship and the physical production traits he inspires from his collaborators.

 

But I must also say that this movie just felt flat and more like a Diet Fincher film much like his well liked 2010 film The Social Network which again was handsomely made but overall did little for me much like this film does and like that film it has a central performance this time being Mr Oldman as the title character Mank that really grated with me after a while I just got so sick of hearing that voice that sounded like some babbling drunk at a dinner party that all of the guests just want to shut the fuck up and after a while I wanted the same thing to happen.

 

And also as nice as the period is I didn’t find myself being all that invested in it emotionally which again Gone Girl and Dragon Tattoo did do for me but those felt like proper Fincher with this dark MA15+ edge where there are no rules, no limits and a willingness to probe into the darker sides of human nature in terms of how we treat those we love and they in return treat us or how society looks upon those in societies where the normal rules of right and wrong don’t always apply, that to me is the Fincher I love and respond to the most.

 

The Fincher of this movie and the Social Network not so much and I get that this movie and that one will have their fans but I am not one of them and my hope is that if he does make another film after Mank it will be another dark and nasty MA15+ film as that to me is where he works best, 2 and a half out of 5.