A good premise ruined by bad direction.

Rating: 1/10 (18 July 2008)

How do weak directors land $100+ budgets? The audiences are too stupid to know what weak film-making is. Berg's shaky, hand-held (and shifting focus) style is emblematic of a director walking on to the set with no idea what he's going to shoot. Just keep the cameras moving and try to pass it off as a "style". This technique is (over)used in the last few years, especially in action scenes to the point where now, it doesn't seem to matter if you can tell what's happening in a scene as long as you know a lot of 'stuff' is going on. To use this same technique in a boardroom where people are sitting around talking, just pulls you out of the films and asking yourself "what the hell is THAT about?" The same lazy, sloppy style was used in "Constand Gardner", another film that suffered from for the ignornance of not realizing that this technique can sometimes work in scenes of intense energy, angst or action...but doesn't play in others. If you're thinking about the direction, the director has failed...and Berg failed through most of the movie on this one.