A Hell of a Waste of Film

Rating: 1/10 (8 March 2005)

Call me a hard-ass when it comes to film, but this movie was a real bummer for me in the respect that it was just plainly too comic book, like Spawn! Yeah, some will say that's just it; "It's taken from a comic book, Senor!" Maybe so, but that doesn't give the production team carte blanch in forgetting what the most important ingredient is when it comes to good cinema: SCRIPTING! I felt the script lacked explanation and left too many loose strings untied. I truly felt dissatisfied, esp. with its denouement. Also, the trailers lead us to believe there's supposed to be some sort of over-the-top special effects, presenting a Hell that is over-the-top as well. At most, less than 10 minutes of the film is devoted to this vision of the netherworld, and only less than a minute was devoted to showing us the seemingly inexhaustible ways demons can torture the damned. In my mind, that scene, if expanded with demonic close-ups inserted, would have lofted this bomb in a more heavenly trajectory. The only bright spot I saw in this film was that it featured Keanu Reeve, one of the finest actors around. But even his presence couldn't keep this stinker from sinking to the depths of Hell itself. It was that bad.