Tired, trite plot line meets high-tech film-making

Rating: 3/10 (4 January 2010)

James Fenimore Cooper meets the 21st century. The Noble Savage theme just will not die. Here, it gets recycled into the "covert operative infiltrates enemy camp and finds out they are nobler than us and changes sides, with tragic consequences" plot line. Moreover, the bad guys are cartoonishly bad and the good guys are utterly without fault, cartoonishly noble. A good movie is one that tells us something true and challenges our understanding of ourselves, our world, our values. In this film, none of the characters has any genuine depth or is even remotely believable. While this may be OK in a mindless action movie, for a film that pretends to be "important", such failings are not forgivable.
The one original part of the movie is the avatar concept. The rest is overdone, anti-Western, neo-pagan claptrap, albeit with genuinely impressive special effects. Somebody out there really knows what to do with a computer.