Pounds of seriousness, ounces of content

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 2001)

Fairly idiotic serial killer cash-in with one-trick-pony gimmick - the killer does "theme killings" along the lines of the Seven Deadly Sins. (You know, Gluttony, Envy, Brad Pitt's performance in this, making movies like this, and the other three.)
One sin that some members of the audience might be guilty of after this is Sloth, since the thing goes on forever. The film treats its own silliness with the greatest respect for its own seriousness, and there is an amount of eye-catching visual stylisation along these lines of which the only connection to the emotional body of the film is via a long, long extension. Piddling around with lenses, you could call it.
Plotted along the lines of an old Batman TV episode (the serial crimes of the Joker, Penguin or Egghead were no more or less plausible, or inventive, or humorous for that matter), the writing is kind of reminiscent of Life Savers candy, except those are nothing without holes, and this is nothing with holes.
Brad Pitt's performance, striving for some sort of bizarre yuppie cool in a heroic struggle with the writers' apparent intention for the character, is possibly the most unlikely homicide detective in screen history. To be fair, Pitt's been a lot better in other movies. To be accurate, so has just about everybody else.
Stupid, modish, cynical picture. I believe the same director did "Fight Club". That's a much better movie, although the screaming plot holes and comic book dementia of the ending of that film bear a family resemblance to this one.