great story and characters

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2006)

This is a great movie. The story and characters are so good that the action seems almost gratuitous. One can tell that dialog was intended to be the main part of the movie. The characters aren't shouting over special effects. Even with all the accents, I was able to understand 99.9% of the dialog. This is one of those rare movies in which I won't have to rent the DVD and turn on the subtitles to understand what I missed. There were not a lot of people in the theater when I saw it, so I don't know how well you would be able to pick up all the dialog if there are a lot of people around you making noise. There is some sappy sentimentalism and subtle romance in the movie, but due to a lot of violent content involving children, it is not a good movie for a date.