Reviews

I was quite surprised by this film. Even if the acting at times is painfully bad, the twists and turning in the story kept me entertained for the full duration of the film.

I especially liked the surprise ending. That Weeds was going to die felt apparent, but I did not expect the "hero" to go down with him and even off-screen at that.

The story about the unwilling wife and the old husband came as a surprise as well.

Overall, an entertaining movie of a kind that is no longer made.

The only thing I was disturbed by was the lameness of the violence and sex scenes, they were very cut, looking almost like an episode of Dallas'(had kind of the same feeling to it as well).

The photo is excellent. The acting is great. The score is superb.

In the end, though, it seems that this movie is more inspired by Fall of the Roman Empire (the Alec Guiness film) than real history. It even seems to take pride in being historically incorrect, making the horrible King Arthur (the Clive Owen film) look like a fully correct historic textbook.

Some issues:

#1: The emperor Commodus was quite a lunatic character in real life too, but he would never try to face the best gladiator in single combat, even if he got to wound him first. #2: No legions were ever allowed to enter Italy (unless there was civil war) during the era in question. To have a field legion from Germania wintered in Ostia is incredibly stupid and incorrect. If the field legion is in Ostia (which is very close to Rome, being Rome's port), who ever is guarding the germanian border? #3: Even if Maximus could have returned to his legion in Ostia, what difference would it have made? There were 10.000 praetorian guard and 20.000 "police"-like troops in Rome at any time. I admit that those soldiers were much worse than hardened legionnaires, but how would the legionnaires get through the very impressive walls of Rome? All Commodus would have had to do was to lock the gate. #4: How could Maximus be captured as a slave? That was not the way slave traders got their goods. To make a roman citizen a slave is unheard of. To make a legionnaire a slave is even worse. A deserter? If he was a deserter, he would have been slain, not made a slave. #5: No, the republic would not be reinstated. Not even the senate wanted that at most times, especially in 180 AD when there had been 84 years of very good emperors that the senate loved. Even when there were bad emperors (such as Commodus, Caligula, Caracalla and Nero) who were murdered with the senate's approval, the senates first goal was to get a senate-friendly emperor on the throne, not reinstate the republic. Interestingly, that was exactly what happened when some senators actually had Commodus murdered in AD 193 (yes, thirteen years after the death of Marcus Aurelius). The senate remembered the Roman Revolution, 100 years of crisis in the late republic, saved only by the emergence of the emperor. Only nutcases wanted the republic system back, because it had proved unfit to govern an empire of that size. #6: You should definitely not mention the reinstatement of the republic in front of the next emperor in line. That would have been high treason and, as I said above, a sign of your own stupidity and non-understanding of politics. #7: There were 600 senators. There were no secret police worth the name yet in 180 AD. You could not "have every senator followed" #8: People would have been offended if someone threw bread on them in the Colosseum. Bread was free in Rome, available at your local bakery.

I realize that a movie is allowed to change history if needed for its plot, but here I do not feel that those changes are needed.

I could go on with unhistorical stuff. How could Tigres expect to face the leading gladiator and win if he had been retired for five years? He obviously did not have much time to train. Compare a MMA fighter of today returning after five years retirement facing a champion. That would never work. Tigres never stood a chance.

The parallels with Fall of the Roman Empire (which is a better movie) are interesting. If you liked Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius (and he was good!), wait till you see Obi-wan Kenobi do it. I recommend it highly.

I will ignore the obviously superior films by Peter Jackson when evaluating this low-budget cartoon.

So ... I think that the team behind this had a success with The Hobbit, even though the animation was horrible. Orcs do not look like toads, Elrond does not have a goatie and stars around his head, gollum does not look like a fish etc. (even if it got worse here when the skeletor-nazguls showed up) Still, The Hobbit (1977) worked in my mind (I gave it an 8 vote here), Glenn's songs were great there, the voices were very good, the story was a children's story, my 4-yr old girl loves it (I saw it for the first time just a month ago). So, The Hobbit was great.

How can this fail so miserably? Of course, the whole idea of omitting almost everything in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers does not work very well. Who is this Aragorn dude who is made king? We feel nothing for him. Galadriel? Whatever. Theoden? Some guy who falls from a horse and dies. He should have had a better horse. Eowyn? Some random girl who gets lucky.

Glenn's songs are also worse in this one, including only two numbers I really liked (Frodo of Nine Fingers and Where there's a whip). The folksongs seems much better suited to the children story in The Hobbit.

I gave this a 4 ... only because it is still Tolkien somewhere there in the background. It is still the battle of Pelennor fields (and they don't show it just like dots as they did in the battle of five armies). Perhaps I am being too kind to the film.

And whoever decided to make Sam a Christian? That was just plain weird.

Having said that, the film works best when it deviates from the original story, as with the singing orcs and the dream sequence with the waving orcs or when Sam conquers Mordor.

This film is only for the die-hard Tolkien fanatics who just have to see it. I don't think I will even show it to my daughter.

I am left perplexed after this movie. It was a weird experience ... First, let me state that I have seen much worse movies (Hercules in New York jumps to mind) ... after all, this was a ninja movie and it had some good fighting in it. Having said that, I can't help but wonder what the hell they were thinking? Why was the ninjas dressed up with bright yellow suits and headbands saying "NINJA"? What was the relationship between the bad guy killed in the last two minutes and Titus? Was there two separate villains? What were the zombies good for? Why were they included? Why did the master have to look like a rabbit with those teeth? Overall, I gave this a 3 out of 10 just because I am always entertained by Ninjas, apparently no matter how bad they look, and I like the attempt at an original story with the undertaker twist.

In the end this is not a movie I would recommend to anyone else but a true ninja freak...

I disliked this film immensly because of its low credibility. There is no way anyone can get away with what Frank White does (there are witnesses, tens of them, there is evidence that would make FBI go bananas and catch White within the week) and even if he gets away with it there is no way the police would get away with what they did. Everyone should have simply been caught by the feds and put away.

The massacres in the movie would also have been CNN stuff for weeks - overshadowing the Gulf War (if the movie is indeed set in 1990).

I also find White´s death disturbing. If indeed he gets away with everything so easily and can outsmart other criminal masterminds so easily, why would a fat stupid cop be able to kill him? It seemed that Frank just had to die and the writer couldn´t find another way to get rid of him for his climactic ending.

The movie is somewhat saved by Walken and Fishbourne. I liked Fishbourne's character immensly. He was extremely savage and evil, but he was undyingly loyal to his boss, something which is rare in these movies. Loyalty is a force which is not often used in this kind of movies.

I rated this movie 5 out of 10 for the good actors and the very good shootout scenes.

*Spoilers ahead*

Great action scenes, but come on... How can anyone actually endure a plot where

* The very much in love Jet Li does not grieve, not even comment on, his wife's death

* The top notch inspector from Hong Kong who goes to investigate a criminal in a place where she has no jurisdiction decides to actually start living with the criminal's family - telling them she is a cop - for quite some time in the vain hope that the criminal will return (what did she do all those days?). And when she returns to her office, noone comments on it.

* gravity suddenly no longer applies when you are using your kid as a weapon

My rating: 3 out of 10 (and that's only because of great fight scenes)

*Spoiler warning*

First of all I rated this movie 2 out of 10.

The idea is good, but there are too many stupid errors in the movie, failing to make it the psyching drama that it might have been. First of all she never fights alone. After an initial very strange doubt from her mother (which is not believable when the mother proves to be so supportive and loving later in the movie) the rape victim is not alone.

She is also unbelievably naive always falling into the Crew's strange traps.

Her friends are unbelievably nasty.

The thing that I find most unbelievably is that Ethan fails to control the crew when he changes his opinon. Ethan is very much the leader of the Crew (hey, they even say so) and people seem to think the other guy is a jerk, but when Ethan changes his opinion he just doesn't manage to convince even one single person in the Crew that he is right and that his former friend is wrong. Everyone just simply hates him... why?? The movie provides no explanation. How did he ever become the leader?

A funny note is that my girlfriend thought I was watching Beverly Hills when she came in. Two actors from the same successful TV-series.... a cheap way to get viewers?

*Spoilers ahead*

I must admit that I have never seen a movie where the actions of the two main characters (Aaliyah and Jet Li) did not matter whatsoever. If you removed them from the plot, all events except the pointless final battle would have occured anyway. The plot itself is propelled by the gang leaders.

It is nice to use the effects that were used in the Matrix, but in the Matrix there was a reason that people could do amazing things and unhuman kicks and leaps - because reality was not real. In Romeo Must Die there is no explanation. Men from China and Hong Kong can simply do supernatural stunts - we just have to believe it.

If the movie tried to be a shakespeare spinoff, it failed miserably, because Romeo should have died.

Having said that, the movie was good entertainment anyway.

My mark: 5 out of 10

Interesting idea, but not that well carried out.

* SPOILER WARNING AHEAD *

I walked out of the cinema just wanting to ask a lot of questions

1) Why didn't they interview any of the soldiers? If you are firing on someone, you will know if they were armed or not. Trust me, you will. Or at least one guy in an entire platoon should have an opinion on it. But the soldiers just didn't have a clue 2) If the colonel was such an experienced soldier, why didn't he just follow the rules of engagement? What was the reason he did not warn the crowd before firing on them? 3) How could the snipers miss at that distance? With all that firing, how could they just hit three marines. I could have shot them all when they ran around on that roof and I have 12 months of military service. 4) That little girl actually fired at the marines - I simply do not believe it 5) If you are a person in an armed crowd and you see a platoon of marines taking position to fire at you, would you just stand in the middle of a square and fire blindly at a roof... I DON'T THINK SO!!!! If all yemenites are such killers, wouldn't they know how to take cover? 6) Whatever happened to the snipers? As soon as the Marines started firing, the snipers simply disappeared...?

And as a final point, this movie was plainly very, very rascist. Yemenites should object a lot and I don't think it will be a hit in Yemen or any arabic country. It will just spread the belief that Americans are crazy.