WARNING! This film contains migraine-inducing direction and novelty subtitles!

Rating: 2/10 (17 February 2006)

With Denzil Washington, Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke and Dakota Fanning on board, this film could've been something special. Unfortunately, Tony Scott blows the whole affair with his awful direction and use of the most annoying gimmick seen in recent cinema history - novelty subtitles! Brian Helgeland's average script serves up nothing in the originality stakes, but with a competent director helming the tale, we may have had a pretty good 'avenging angel' flick. Instead, Scott indulges his 'artistic' whims rather than concentrating on telling a story  the result is a 140 minute piece of self-indulgent dreck that irritates and bores in equal amounts. Even when the 'action' kicks in (and it takes a long time to do so), you'll probably find yourself with finger poised over the off switch. Life is too short for pretentious drivel like this.
The constant choppy editing, flickering images and pointless use of out-of-focus shots will make your head hurt and the aforementioned subtitles, which even appear when the actors are speaking English, do nothing to help matters. If you insist on watching this, keep the paracetamol on standby.