Mank Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

3. David Fincher's Smoothly Controlled Direction

To the surprise of not a single solitary soul, Mank is an expertly crafted drama that, aside from those few aforementioned stylistic embellishments, is another home-run for David Fincher.

Despite its more restrained period style, the director's camera movements are as motivated and slickly smooth as ever, making the absolute most of every actor's physical movements and facial expressions, let alone their actual dialogues.

Fincher is easily one of the strongest actors' directors working today, and that again is something he aggressively confirms here.

As much as Fincher allegedly shot up to 200 takes of certain scenes, there's never the feeling that the director compromised or delivered anything but exactly what he wanted.

And though this is without question the director's most niche movie to date, it also demonstrates another facet of Fincher's filmmaking nous far away from the more heightened stylishness of, say, Fight Club or Zodiac.