In like a lion...

Rating: 6/10 (18 August 2009)

I enjoyed the first half of this film a great deal more than the second. This has to do with the screenplay being very inventive in it's set-up but becoming diluted by the audience-pleasing trope of having your main character run and shoot and blow stuff up. The first 45 minutes are expertly directed and motored along nicely as I got caught up in the main character's story with it's occasional twists and flashes of heart. I wanted to know what happened to him next. I even leaned forward in my seat a little...but I saw the direction the climax would take, however, I began to care less. Whatever emotion I had invested was left with nothing to do but evaporate. All the character defining moments get bulldozed aside by a sort of mecha love-fest which takes you loudly all the way to the sequel-made ending.