Typical Modern Disney Adventure Fare

Rating: 5/10 (26 September 2010)

For the first hour, this is an "okay" adventure, not bad, nothing great. The production values are pretty high but that's no surprise since it's Disney, which has big bucks.
If you like the normal modern Disney adventure fare, such as "Pirates Of the Caribbean," you'll probably like this although Johnny Depp is more wacky and entertaining than Jake Gyllenhaal as the lead hero. (His name also is a lot easier to spell!) Gemma Arteron is another modern-day stereotypical Disney heroine: pretty, sassy, tough, and obnoxious. We saw the same thing, again, in "Pirates Of The Caribbean."
Those films and this one - by the same production company - have a lot in common. For instance, count on overdone action, nice scenery, heroines like the one described above, clichéd lines and characters both good and bad, many scenes in which the villains take a half-million shots at the hero and never hit him while he destroys everyone sight, etc., etc. You get the picture. I guess what I'm saying is that the older you are, the more you've seen this kind of thing over and over and it gets a little jaded.
I also don't understand why they would take an American actor - Gyllenhaal - and make him speak with a British accent all the while playing a Persian! Tell me what sense that makes? In fact, tells you how much sense any of this film makes.
Throw in the last 40 minutes with all the ridiculous mumbo-jumbo occult-like theologies and the action that goes over-the-top and you have a picture that went from tolerable to intolerable.
And Hollywood wonders why fewer people are going to the movies and rentals. Even on pain medicine, this film, after awhile, too much to bear.
Why do they insist on insulting us by assuming we need non-stop action for two hours? In end, it's way too much and get boring.