Look up the phrase "deux ex machina" before seeing this

Rating: 3/10 (13 September 2008)

First, I will start with the good parts. I liked Clooney as the over-paranoid Fed. Some comedy is done with facial expressions and timing and he was very good. David Rasche and JK Simmons absolutely steal the end of the movie. Brad Pitt was semi-amusing, but he wasn't given much to work with. Tilda Swinton was great as the ice princess, but, alas, she wasn't given much to work with either. This ends the good parts. The rest of it was awful. Sure, there were some funny parts, but, overall, the movie was a bust. The pacing was very strange - it seemed like there was about 20 min of movie left on the cutting room floor that could have helped it and a bunch of stuff that was easily ditched that would have helped immensely. There was definitely a funny, dark movie idea somewhere, but it was lost. And, the end was just inexplicably awful, hence my summary "deux ex machina" - it's like the movie was a low-budget indie film that ran out of budget/film and they realized they needed to wrap it up, so, they did. Don't bother paying to see this; if it comes on cable TV some night, but if there isn't poker on TV or a good infomercial, then this is OK to watch.