THE WALL: Held Up By An Outstanding Ending

Maybe it was the total lack of advertising. Maybe it was none other than John freaking Cena being in this movie. Maybe it was the first 15 minutes of really cheesy dialogue. But one way or another, I wasn’t ready for The Wall (which, of course, is the best way to watch a movie). It’s not quite the action flick it’s been billed as – which works both for and against it.

What does The Wall do right?

Well I’ll get straight to it: the ending. The ending is what The Wall does right.  It was one of those things that you could sort of see coming a few minutes beforehand, but you really wouldn’t let yourself believe it: they don’t have the balls to go through with this, right?

Wrong! And it’s a good thing they had the balls to go through with it, because it pretty much saves the movie. All of the rising action had been… okay, but forgettable. There was always a feeling that the movie was building towards something – or at least that it had better be building towards something, or else what was the point? A run-of-the-mill happy ending would have been a bit of a letdown.

There are apparently some people that are complaining about the ending. I do not understand these people. I imagine they must hate fun. I imagine they want movies to never be cool, instead insisting that they be 100% realistic and believable. Come on, people. Watch documentaries instead and stop complaining about cool movies.

If the ending is controversial (even though it shouldn’t be), here’s something everyone should be able to like: at least The Wall isn’t a star spangled American love-fest (just kidding. I’m sure a lot of people don’t like that. In fact I know of at least one older gentleman in my showing who was not a fan). Anyway, they brought up some ideas that were way more nuanced than I was expecting. They didn’t do much more than bring them up, but at least they were there.

There’s one more huge thing The Wall gets right (and it’s more satisfying to see it in person, so skip this paragraph if you haven’t seen it yet): they kill John Cena right off the bat. Yeah, he comes back for a few minutes later, but they kill him again pretty quick. Nothing at all against John Cena – but there’s no way I can ever take him seriously on screen. I’ve seen way too many videos and memes. Not gonna happen.

What does The Wall do wrong?

I’m guessing that most people going to see The Wall are going in thinking it’s a good old fashioned action movie. Don’t get me wrong – there’s definitely a fair amount of cool guys doing cool action stuff, but dialogue is the driving force for the majority of the 90 minute runtime. That’s usually great – it’s just that in this case, it’s not so much a driving force as just something that’s there to fill time. It doesn’t move the plot forward, and it’s not really engaging enough to carry the movie.

I know it’s kind of unfair to criticize a movie for not going far enough in its execution of a good thing- but I’m going to do it anyway. I mentioned before that The Wall is more nuanced than I expected. They hint at treading on some tough issues regarding U.S. involvement in the Middle East, then immediately retreat into action scenes when things are about to get serious.

Of course, this whole conflict is a pretty touchy subject, and I’m not saying they should have taken a hard stance (and alienated a large portion of their target audience in doing so). I’m just saying they could have made us think about it a little more. We got a mostly trivial back-and-forth with the sniper, when a deeper, more thought-provoking conversation could have made this movie great.

The fact of the matter is, without much in the engaging dialogue department, there’s not much substance to the majority of the film. Which means that the whole purpose of The Wall is basically the ending. In fairness, they do really nail that part – it’s just that it takes too long to get there. What I’m trying to say is that The Wall could have been almost as good if it were only 30 minutes long.

Think about it: once The Wall establishes a central conflict in the first 15 minutes, almost nothing changes before the last 10 minutes. We learn a tiny bit more about our characters, and the titular wall gets a little smaller, but other than that… there’s not much going on. Usually, good slow-burn thrillers at least give us some character development and rich dialogue, but The Wall was lacking in both.

Conclusion

I hate when people hold movies to an arbitrarily high standard, especially when that movie doesn’t necessarily aspire to be anything extraordinary. So I’m not going to do it. The Wall has a kick-ass ending, and whatever mediocrity you have to sit through to get there is worth it. Simple as that.

That’s enough from me – what did you think of The Wall? Could you see the ending coming? Did you want to see more or less of John Cena? Let us know in the comments!

The Wall was released on May 12, 2017 in the US. For a full list of release dates, see here.