Armageddon Time Review
The conclusions drawn from James Gray’s Armageddon Time are perhaps a little trite and obvious, but you can’t deny the filmmaking talent on display, or the incredible turn from Anthony Hopkins.
Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) is a bit of a trouble-maker, consistently getting into mischief at his public school with friend Johnny (Jaylin Webb). This is much to the consternation of his parents Esther (Anne Hathaway) and Irving (Jeremy Strong), both of whom are at their wits end with him. The only one who can get through to him is his Grandpa, Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins), who tries to impress upon him a set of values deeply influenced by his understanding of the generational pursuit of the American dream.
Director James Gray has channeled his own personal experiences into this coming of age piece, which has an intriguing aura to it. There’s a certain joy in the everyday to the movie that makes it endlessly watchable, even in moments that just feel like standard familial drama.
That said, there is a lot of drama in the piece also that exceeds the standard and everyday. There’s cops, robberies, homelessness, a particularly brutal beating scene, and more. But it’s the everyday moments that stand out as the most poignant.
Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway are both fantastic, doing a lot with smaller roles. Repeta is fine, although his character (and perhaps through the way he is performed by Repeta) is so intensely annoying you sort of wish that some of these close calls with the cops or with danger became closer to fatal. Webb is great.
At the end of the day, however, this is Hopkins' movie. He may not be in every scene, but his presence is felt throughout constantly. His genteel old mensch act brings gravity to dialogue and revelations that in lesser hands would fall to pretension and obviousness, but in his read as blessings from on high. It’s a fantastic performance that deserves to be sought out.
