Too bad the action scenes are all chopped up

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2010)

There is no point in my repeating all the stuff that you can read in the hundreds of other reviews, so I am going to talk about one aspect that no one else seems to want to talk about. The action scenes are unwatchable because they are all chopped up. They are filmed from multiple camera angles and then the footage from the different cameras is spliced together in a way where no single camera remains for more than about a half second. I have noticed this technique in several other movies in recent years, a notable example of which was the first Bourne movie, and one of the Batman movies. This is a decidedly inferior technique, and any director worth a fraction of what they are paid should know better than to use this sloppy technique. The reason for using is probably twofold. They probably believe that many viewers like this technique, because the rapid camera cuts simulate fast action and increase the adrenaline level of the viewers. For me, it just creates nausea. The other reason is that it is cheap in terms of time spent with the highly paid actors. Rather than have them go through lengthy rehearsals with professional stunt people so that they can pull off a decent semblance of a fight scene, they step through a sequence of stop-motion or slow- motion poses. It amounts to stop-motion animation pulled off with real actors. It comes off as fake, and merely annoying. No movie that relies on this technique deserves a good rating, no matter how good it is in other respects. Were it not for this problem, I would have given this movie a 9 rating, because other than this, it really is an outstanding movie. But it is pulled way down by the use of this decidedly inferior cost-saving technique.