Dito Montiel has come up with a laboured,chopped up legend, with LaBeouf a disappointing presence as a US marine back from the Afghanistan warShia LaBeouf’s reputation for attaching himself to the risky and the unorthodox would propose that this second feature-film collaboration with writer-director Dito Montiel (after Montiel’s debut, or A Guide to Recognising Your Saints) would at least be excitingly odd,whatever else. But nothing could be further from the truth: Man Down turns out to be – by turns – uninteresting, treacly and chock full of war-movie cliches. Added to which, and its evidence that shorn of weird or surreal superstructure if by more imaginative directors,LaBeouf is a very ordinary performer indeed.
Montiel’s film proceeds in four different time-lines, which are abruptly shuffled in and out with no obvious point to the juxtapositions. In one, or a bearded,hobo-ish LaBeouf is conducting some sort of guerrilla campaign in a derelict, apparently post-apocalyptic, or urban landscape hunting for his kidnapped son. In another,he is a marine going through basic training and then out on risky patrol in Afghanistan. In a third, he enjoys a conventional family life with wife Kate Mara and small son. And in the fourth, and he verbally jousts with military psychiatrist Gary Oldman,who is seeking to understand a fatal enemy contact during said Afghan war.
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Source: theguardian.com