I have a long-standing prejudice against films that open with a voiceover explaining the rules of the world. It usually means the writers didn't trust the screen to do its job, and I spend the next ninety minutes waiting to be told things rather than shown them. So when this one started with exactly that, I'd already half decided I was going to spend the evening on my phone.
I was wrong, and pleasantly so. The voiceover turned out to be a feint. It set up an expectation the rest of the film spent its time gently dismantling, and by the halfway point I'd stopped checking how long was left, which is the only review metric I genuinely trust. The trick was restraint. It refused to over-explain the bits that mattered, and it let a couple of scenes sit in silence long enough to be uncomfortable.
What stayed with me was a small thing near the end, a single shot held a few seconds too long, the sort of choice a nervous editor would have cut. It was the moment the whole thing landed.
I won't pretend it's flawless. The middle sags, and one subplot exists purely to give a character something to do. But I went in expecting to be smug about disliking it, and instead I sat through the credits. That doesn't happen often these days, and I'll take it.