Beautiful, but flawed

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2001)

Sorry to be a killjoy, but this is not the work of genius nor, for that matter, the film of the year that the bandwagon says.
It's beautiful, full of balletic action, has two enchanting female leads, and gives the Western world a view of epic and fantasy different from Hollywood's obsession with Marvel and DC Comics. But it is not a masterpiece.
The problem is the story. There's way too much exposition at the start, we're led in by one character, then lose focus on her and go to another, send lost of time in the desert, but never really get to the bottom of why our young heroine is like she is.
Before you leap to your keyboard, I'm not the kind of movie goer that needs everything spelt out, but for all its visual magnificence (and it is wonderful), at the end I still felt hungry.