Started off good, then seemed to fall apart...

Rating: 5/10 (2 March 2005)

The movie starts off pretty quick and fast paced. And I liked how it started off and liked the first 30-40 minutes. Then it kind of slows down and the flow of the movie starts to get inconsistent. I also thought around this point in the film the editor just went to sleep. Some scenes are just boring; others go on for too long, and still others just left me confused or seemed irrelevant. It was kind of sad how the beginning was very interesting but then it just kind of broke down. Towards the end it picks up a little bit and the ending isn't bad, but the lag / inconsistencies in the middle kind of made me loose interest.
I guess the other aspect was that as the movie played out I seemed to understand less and less of what was going on. For one I didn't understand why Keanu was doomed to go to hell. If they explained it I kind of missed it. Also there were a ton of other things that either went explained or I just simply didn't understand or couldn't keep up. I do have hearing difficulties (which usually aren't an issue in a loud theater), but where I saw it had pathetic sound so maybe I just missed much of the dialog.
I kind of got the general gist that there's this all mighty Dagger used by the devil or some other baddie, that when some poor Mexican stumbles onto it, he becomes immortal, possessed, and starts reeking havoc moving towards some goal or destination, seemingly possessing people and tilting the balance along the way. However this is where it starts to get weird and I start to loose focus on what's going on and why. I didn't understand why some people became possessed; I didn't understand why certain demons could now start crossing thresholds that Keanu kept spurting out "They're not supposed to enter our realm." I didn't understand what actually happened to the possessed guy carrying the dagger. I didn't understand the relevance of Gabriel and why he was played by a she and what he/she was trying to do in the very end with the dagger. The list of "I don't understand" just goes on and on Unlike the matrix where everything is in riddles, this movie is either just not consistent at all, or just simply doesn't explain enough, or just expects the audience to follow a very weird non understandable plot, not sure which is the case.
The story was interesting. Keanu is an exorcist who's job is to vanquish demons who cross the line, However since he's going to hell anyway, he has a very careless way about him, which IMO kind of hurts him in that it makes his acting look very bland like he simply just doesn't care, which I read a lot of complaints about. Personally I think it wasn't so much his acting as it was his character was very morbid, cold, resentful, and just down right miserable. So yeah, it came off like he wasn't much into it. The other actors in the film I thought did aright. There was no one in the film who I thought did an exceptional job in terms of acting So no acting awards from what I saw. The effects were pretty good. Nothing stellar, but they fit the bill. All in all it was an okay movie with some entertaining / interesting scenes, but by large I found it to be very confusing to the point of being frustrating. It's like when you keep taking breaks when watching a movie to the point where you just can't follow it anymore, except here I was in my seat the whole time. I've rarely had problems understanding movies, so it's not like I don't get half the movies I've seen. This one seemed to be an exception though If I see this movie again (by renting it later on I mean) it will only be to see if I can make more sense out of it as it just came and went when I saw it in the theater.