A waste of almost 180 min of celluloid...

Rating: 3/10 (9 January 2005)

To me the film was a total flop. Sitting through almost three hours of this movie was not easy. For starters, the story is practically non-existent, especially for a film lasting almost 3 hours. It is overly simplistic, the dialogs are only basic, there is nothing of substance there. All this could have been easily made to fit into a 90-minute film and would probably have been much more effective. In addition, the characters, the set and the filming are more like a cartoon than a film trying to depict reality, totally unbelievable. If it wasn't for all the blood and butchery that is omni-present, one would think this is a "cartoonesque" adaptation of an 18th century child novel aimed at semi-retarded kids. Finally, as mentioned above, there are far too many gory scenes of gratuitous violence (and I am really not one to shun violent scenes if they serve a purpose). All in all, I don't know what Scorcese had in mind when he was making this movie. To me it just doesn't make any sense at all.