pffft...and that's not....

Rating: 5/10 (2 December 2012)

....the sound of bullets pouring through the cab or the van they were in. The movie has nice actors, it's too long, and your eyes might start rolling the fourth or fifth time they explain the rules to you. it's watchable mostly because it looks good in stretches. There is a memorable city-falling-into-the-sea moment late in the movie that felt a little like Planet of the Apes meets Dark City. And...the action is just silly at times. Give me all the dream levels you want but if the bad guys are going to miss that badly that often maybe you could suggest to me that the bullets are missing because they want them to miss. I mean, one of the good guys got to fire a grenade launcher simply because he wished it were so. But then why bother to run at all? Take your time, the traffic downtown is bad all hours of the dream day. So bullets do matter in these dreams, as the deadly powerful yet instantly trustworthy Japanese guy who wants to create the world's largest (publicly owned/traded?...what's their symbol on the Nikkei?) energy company gets shot and we have to live with his chest wound for half the movie. It might have been an amusing Groundhog Day/Highlander scenario if they had all been continuously turned into swiss cheese and brought out of it to plan and try again. Ellen Page could have drawn up some more pleasant cityscapes using a charcoal pencil. That was a nice airy studio they were in.