Pretentious and trite

Rating: 1/10 (27 July 2005)

Denzel is good as always, but this turgid, dull potboiler really is a damp squib. It's overlong, too much information gets repeated ad nauseam (how many times do we have to hear what The Brotherhood is?), the director doesn't play fair (the phony Sixth Sense glimpses of Pita), Dakota Fanning is like no kid I've ever met outside of the movies, and the oh-so-hip hyperkinetic editing and visual trickery straight from today's edgy commercials just induces motion sickness, every plot twist is guessable long before it occurs. Plus a gratuitous downer ending... what less could you ask for? Avoid. Note: the DVD has tons of deleted scenes, including an ending suggested by Denzel which I had also thought of while watching the film. It's much better than the current pseudo-Christlike choice, but it's still nowhere near strong enough to save this film.