Annoying

Rating: 4/10 (4 October 2004)

The box in which this movie came listed the film as 'Super Action'. Well, the action wasn't so super and what wasn't action was barely tolerable. First of all, I found the directing in this movie to be totally annoying. The editing of the film made me feel like I was watching a 2 ½ hour music video. It sure is great that there are now digital effects available so that a director can now infuse an intolerable amount of 'really cool effects' into their movies by utilizing some sort of video software allowing easy modifications to digitized images. These 'really cool effects' go from sharp edits, where a hand moving does not move in one motion but in several motions (wow) and where we get to see the 'round and round' effect given a conversation between two characters in a new and totally crisp, annoying fashion. This story took so long to build up to anything that I figured that last half had to be 'super super action' in order to wind up being 'super action' for the whole film since the beginning hour and a half had NO action. Denzel Washington just seemed pretty much asleep throughout the film. His character was very shallow and even though an attempt was made to have him 'have a heart' after hanging around with the kid, the attempt came up short. Then we get to the action. Well, I've seen better action in a non 'super action' film by far. Plus, the action was nasty, out of sorts with the rest of the movie. It's like the director was trying to make Denzel's character a really nasty dude, but even that was coming up short.
Save your money.