‘Cyrano’: Despite an Excellent Peter Dinklage, and To-Die-For Production Design, Familiarity Creeps In [Capsule]

Here are my capsuled thoughts on Joe Wright’s “Cyrano” originally posted on 12.01.21. The film goes wide this Friday.

You can direct the hell out a movie, like Joe Wright does with his musical “Cyrano,” and still miss the mark. Not to mention full-blooded performances from Peter Dinklage as Cyrano de Bergerac and the wonderful Haley Bennett as his secret crush. The production design is also to die for, but the story, well the story is so well-known and the stakes so familiar that I was just waiting for the whole thing to end. It does clock in at a breezy 90 minutes and the songs by The National are very good, albeit kinda forgettable. The best parts come when the love story is put aside in favour of the Franco-Spanish War, that’s when Wright beautifully encapsulates the distance between soldiers and their loved ones. But it all just felt like a big non-factor for me, Edmond Rostand’s 19th century play has been mimicked so many times that this one doesn’t bring any new magic to it, the films ends up landing like a thud. [C]