Reviews

This movie is so visually stunning that you almost forget the flaws in the story line and the characters. It's beauty and creativity takes your breath away. That alone makes it worth going to see.

The plot is standard sci-fi simple/stupid and the characters fit in to the story well, with one glaring exception. The character of Colonel Miles Quaritch is like the video game character Duke Nukem, except with less depth. He is so unfeeling and hateful that you believe mountains can float more than you believe this guy could really exist. Considering that he is a main character this is a huge impediment to our willingness to go along with the plot. He needs some kind of back story to justify his hatred, like his family being savagely murdered by a Navi warrior or something. Just being a gung ho mercenary isn't nearly enough motivation for his behaviour.

One thing I noticed but I haven't seen any mention of anywhere is during the battle where the big tree is destroyed there seemed to be a glimpse of some boiling black smoke that looked exactly like the black clouds of smoke billowing from the top of the World Trade Center. I hope that was only a coincidental resemblance.

Please do not read this if you haven't seen the movie.

I was extremely disappointed in this movie. It is well made, has great actors, and a great beginning, but it goes absolutely nowhere. It completely failed in achieving its potential. It does not tell the real story. It feels like just half a movie.

The movie concentrates on his effort to free his wife, but that is not the real story. The real story revolves around whether she did it or not, and whether, once they are free, she is either absolved or exposed. That is interesting. The mechanics of engineering an escape are boring, and his descent into robbery and murder to free his wife are not interesting because we do not follow his journey into anguish and despair. The emotional journey is not there. The film makers have made it hard on themselves by having the couple have a young son. His presence forces the father to keep his act together and act normal. Without him the actor could have given his anguish much more exposure.

I would like to have seen the first half of this movie showing the murder, her capture, their escape to a foreign country, always keeping her guilt ambiguous, and the second half the cop, who is a strong charismatic character, hunt them down and finally capture them. He could become convinced of her innocence and they would only receive a light sentence for running away, but you would always suspect she was really guilty and that he was duped. Or perhaps he is fixated on her guilt and hunts them down and captures them, but in the ensuing court case, she is proved innocent. However, years later he discovers he was right after all. Or perhaps he never finds them, but years later he runs into their grown son, and finally discovers the truth about what she did.

This movie is extremely frustrating, because so much potential was lost.