“Armageddon Time” Review!

Director: James Gray

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Anthony Hopkins

Director James Gray's "Armageddon Time," starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Hathaway, is about a Jewish family in New York in the 80s. Two great moments in the film include Hopkins uttering the words "Hakka-mukka" after lovingly hugging his grandson, and Hopkins laughing "Gigi-hem" at the Guggenheim Museum. In a semi-autobiographical drama that draws heavily from his sensational charisma, he plays the loving grandfather of veteran mischievous schoolboy Paul Graff (Michael Banks' Rebetta), whose gruff behavior causes growing tension within his traditional Jewish family.

It's the late 1980s in America, and Paul finally finds a match in his natural rebellion, his classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb). Together, the boys make fun of their strict teacher and get a collective kick out of getting laughs from their friends. This seemingly harmless friendship has complex political overtones. Paul is a white, middle-class Jewish boy; Johnny, a black kid from a poor background. If one leans into indecency without much thought to the consequences, the other has turned even the most innocuous jokes into brutal displays of structural racism.

The impersonal nature of this politically motivated play brings its characters' development to a standstill. The people Gray brings to the screen, trapped in the director's tight emotional rope, live only in nostalgia somewhere in the story, shown and unpublished, even a small glimpse of breathing room to enjoy. As Paul's parents, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong do their best to absorb the dry bone.

Equally repulsive in its turmoil are the film's attempts to address the social and racial conflicts of the time. Grafs quizzes survivors as Reagan's voice blares over the television, and the Trump family is superficially recruited as privileged preppy standards are encouraged to emulate Paul. Subtlety is a luxury rarely practiced here. In Glacier, Gray's self-reflexive exercise desperately clings to any semblance of meaning to justify its existence, but can't shake the lameness of a technically competent, motivational yawn.