How did one thin idea become 3 hours?

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2003)

What on earth was that? One of the worst films I have ever seen - Marty you can keep my money but you owe me 3 hours of my life!
***spoilers***
The plot was as cliche ridden as it gets - the avenging son, the bad guy with a warped code of honour, the feisty floozy love interest who has history with the bad guy, the double-crossing friend... I could go on.
The plot went nowhere. You knew what was going to happen 5 minutes in and 3 hours later, it did. The 2hrs 55 in between was presumably supposed to be character development but did we learn anything about these stereotypes which we hadn't realised 20 seconds after meeting them? Absolutely not.
Somebody really should have informed the writer that it's traditional to make the plot and sub-plot interact in some way: None of the backdrop about the draft or the politics had any relevance to the main story which was essentially a mixture of Titanic and Bloodsport (actually van Damme is probably one of the few actors who would have made a worse fist of Amsterdam than Leo did!)
Finally the acting: Leo needs to learn a new face other than the cheeky-boy grin and the concentrating furrowed brow. People have raved about Day-Lewis but all I could see was De Niro, who was Scorsese's original choice; he seemed to have been told "Do it the way Bobby would have". The movie said nothing, it just occured. The timing of its release combined with its title and setting might have made it more relevant for some, but without that context it offers nothing.
It did have one effect on me: It was the first time that a film made me angry for how poor it was. And boy did it take itself seriously for the kind of story that a 14 year old group of boys could have come up with in a drama lesson!