You will enjoy this much more if you ignore the hype.

Rating: 3/10 (24 March 2007)

Well, I just saw this, and in two words and a contraction: I'm not impressed. Unfortunately, I don't know a thing about the story this is based on, so I'm not saddled with any preconceptions there, and I'm judging this movie COMPLETELY on its own merit, which I found really lacking.
I went expecting a big ol' bloodbath with some witty quips, lots of freaks, badassery all around and no story to speak of.
What I got was a flick that tried WAY too hard for the one-liners, a story that would've been bearable if it the narration hadn't been so forced, and characters that were painfully predictable. I wouldn't even mention that, but yes, this film DID try for plot, and it tried a lot harder than I had been led to believe by other people's reviews. I wish it hadn't; I would have enjoyed it more.
The battle scenes were just vaguely amusing chaos with two notable exceptions: When they actually used the phalanx, it was cool, and when they were fighting that giant dude, that was pretty well-done. The rest of it was just dull repetition of uninteresting scenes; OK, a limb there, a limb here, lots of blood, woohoo. But wait! We can do slow motion! We can do slow motion! We can do slow motion! We can -- WE GET IT, STOP WITH THE SLOW MOTION. It works sometimes for dramatic emphasis. It was overused in this movie to the point where it actually interrupted the action, and that's all this movie had going for it to begin with.
Another thing I wasn't impressed with was the cinematography. I don't know why people are so impressed. There are a few shots where it's obvious they were going for some kind of art-film appeal... mostly, though, it's just adequate. Not bad, but certainly not great. The mood was cool; I love the whole monochromish color thing, but aside from that... there wasn't much there.
Bland choreography, hokey dialogue, uninteresting visuals... this movie just has so little going for it. It completely failed to engage me, which is actually pretty hard to do; that's a serious disappointment.