Review of Mank (2020) by Theredsky — 20 Dec 2020

An excellent return from Director David Fincher. With everything getting postponed till next year, this easily shot up to the top of my most anticipated for winter. It’s a little confusing for the first 25 minutes of the film but you soon start to get the grasp of it once the film starts moving along at a quicker pace.

Gary Oldman’s performance is easily one of my favorite performances of the year although it’s not my personal favorite. His portrayal of screenwriter of Herman Mankiewicz is incredibly accurate and mesmerizing.

He absolutely steals every scene he is in and he is incredible at showing this drunken genius. In fact, there isn’t a single bad performance. Everyone does a great job although they aren’t as fantastic as Gary Oldman.

Speaking of screenwriting, the writing is great. Fincher has always done a good job at subtlety showing his characters and their changes and there isn’t any difference here. The film looks great too.

Fincher made the smart decision to make the film look like it came out of the 1940s meaning that audio and quality looks like the 40s which works very well for the tone the film is going for. I thought the story of Mankiewicz life mixed in with his inspiration and writing of the critically acclaimed Citizen Kane.

Citizen Kane is obviously the better movie but it was great to see the inspiration Mankiewicz had for the film. There is a lot of political talk in the film relating to socialism vs capitalism which could turn some off but I enjoyed how the incorporated it by showing how different Mankiewicz was from his rich friends.

I would definitely recommend it to fans of Fincher or want a film with good performances and potential Oscar talk.