I watched “Allied” the other night, a 2016 film starring Brad Pitt and directed by Robert Zemeckis. If you haven’t heard of the film starring one of Hollywood’s biggest names and a director of such modern classics as the “Back To the Future” films and “Forest Gump” then welcome to the new reality of show-biz. Names and track records don’t amount to peanuts these days (save for the international market where Steven Seagal is apparently still a reliable draw).

The reason you may never have heard of “Allied” is that the film wasn’t very good. Pitt and co-star Marion Cotillard (an Oscar winner, no less) are an attractive couple, and Zemeckis’ direction is fine, if so old-fashioned that even the exteriors look like they were shot on a soundstage. The problem is…as it almost always is…in the script by Steven Knight. Of course, how much of the story was Knight’s sole invention is anyone’s guess, and in the “collaborative” process of filmmaking, there is plenty of blame to go around for the tired plot contrivances.

So why bring up a 2016 movie that no one remembers (aside from the absurd waste of money such movies represent)? I do this to point out another pet peeve of today’s story-telling industry: the “Oh Snap!” moment.

Drama is conflict and conflict often plays out as an “Oh Snap!” moment in which the hero is placed in a serious pickle.

–Oh snap! He just walked in on his wife with another man.

–Oh snap! She just slept with her new boss.

–Oh snap! He’s been put in a jail cell with his wife’s ex-husband.

You get the idea. In “Allied” the moment comes when Brad Pitt is told his wife may be a German spy. Oh snap! What’s a person to do?

The problem with such moments is that they are almost always something that happens to the hero. The hero has no motivated goal or objective. And much of the story is spent tediously laying the groundwork that leads to this moment. We have to see Pitt and Cotillard meet, engage in espionage, fall in love, get married, have a baby…yeah, there is a lot of track laying here…some of it is interesting in the moment, but none of it is attached to any goal of Pitt’s. He’s just a guy.

I don’t think audiences are interested in such track-laying tedium. “Allied” could have been more compelling if the film had started right where Pitt is informed about his wife’s betrayal. We get the rest of it…no need to waste an hour of screen time on it.