Okayish if you like stomach muscles!

Rating: 7/10 (23 March 2007)

Never have i been so excited by a trailer for a movie. I must have watched it 20 or 30 times in the run up to this movie. I counted the days until it was released. And after having watched it last night i find myself a little disappointed.
Its a classic example of brilliant trailer editing. Good music skillfully edited with the best scenes from the movie.
I just had my hopes pinned on this movie being different from all the previous letdowns because the trailer was so damn good. Once again I was wrong.
Its not that the movie is bad (I enjoyed it) its just that it wasn't the nerve jangling experience (likr the trailer) I had expected it to be. I had seen all the best bits already so there was no surprises. And the best bits as i just called them looked ridiculous in the context of the movie.
I read the frank miller comic a few years back (not my favourite) and thought it would make a great film. It probably would have. Why the director felt the need to fill it will elephants, giants, mutants, rhinos and bare-chested he-men i'll never know. To me the sole single story arc of a small number of men using battle tactics to slow down a larger enemy should be enough for a brilliant war film anyway.
It almost seems that the "true" story did not have enough for the scriptwriters/directors to make a full length modern music video with and so they added a menagerie of baddies (including grenade clowns).
To cut a long review short I enjoyed this movie, but nowhere near as much as I should have done. I wanted so much more after watching the trailer. I consider myself a little let down.
One friend of mine was lucky enough to see it at an IMAX cinema and he said "I've never seen a movie with more nerve jangling moments and my girlfriend cried for the last ten minutes."
Clearly his girlfriend was closer to the truth than him as she, in the last ten minutes she actually realised what twelve quid could have bought instead of this bastardised, cinematic, gay friendly, bruckheimer, cock adventure.