Life

Maybe the lawyers advised that a biopic on James Dean’s later life might have been too risky, so they instead alighted on this rather uninteresting phase of his life and coupled with two really unremarkable performances leave us with something that could hardly be more soporific. It’s Dane DeHaan who is the enigmatic young starlet being considered by acclaimed director Nicholas Ray (Peter Lucas) for the part that might define him - assuming studio boss Sam Goldwyn (Sir Ben Kingsley) buys in, but the waiting game is proving nerve-wracking for Dean. Meantime, at a similar stage in his own career is budding magazine photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) who’s convinced his editor (Joel Edgerton) that a photo assignment on this aspiring actor is a good idea. Both men have their fair share of baggage but perhaps that might serve to draw them together and befriend, even trust, the other? They do say a photograph speaks a thousand words so maybe at this point we should just spool on to the end where we see some of the world-famous, moodily framed, monochrome pictures of the cigarette smoking Dean and just skip this unimpressive and dialogue heavy outing for two actors who’ve not the slightest degree of chemistry between them as this positively plods along for an almost two hours that tells us virtually nothing new about Dean, and showcases just how mediocre an actor Pattinson is when he’s not just meant to be eye candy. It’s not so much about life, more about dearth - of just about everything interesting.