Brian Roan

Hart and Cranston seem committed and work their magic to sometimes allow the movie to spring to life.

Mute is one of those strange oddities in which every single aspect of the plot feels purposefully cultivated for some grand thematic or existential purpose, yet none of it coheres into something that feels particularly meaningful or revelatory.

In between battles the banter is light enough and the actors charming enough to make even the most leaden dialogue bounce a little.

It is all of the harrowing horror of an asylum film with none of the deeper, more disconcerting subtext or mind-bending logic puzzles — a film not entirely devoid of merit, but nonetheless hobbled by poor storytelling.

Muddled characters and uneven storytelling are the roots of the issues here, but the ways in which Ayer seems to try to cover up his film’s deficiencies grate most of all.

In spite of these deficiencies — the narrative wildness, the static characters, the impenetrable lore — Warcraft is still not entirely a failure, most of all because of its charming, almost admirable level of goofy conviction.

While not a disaster, it would be fair to say it is somewhere between “disappointingly serviceable” and “embarrassingly pointless.”