Seriously, this all has to stop now. Right now. I mean it.

Rating: 1/10 (8 November 2012)

Another film where: stuff happens; stuff happens with people being cool happens; people run about and it sort of looks a bit cool while stuff happens; some guy knows something better than some other guy knows something - but I didn't quite get what it was what he knew better than the other guy who didn't know it - and because he knows it a bit better something blows up and then the guy who knew more stuff looks way cool and; after an hour in I have absolutely no clue what the plot is; and after an hour in I have absolutely no idea what the plot is and I don't care and; after an hour I switch off the film because I've been watching for an hour and if I don't know what the plot is I probably won't actually find out and I've got the sneaking suspicion that what plot there was - presumably at some stage there was actually some story that someone had written and was readable in some form as a narrative that had a beginning, a middle and an end and there were some characters in there who had some sort of motive for doing stuff and that stuff got done - got completely negotiated out by a big team of screen writers who are paid a very large amount of money to massage every drop of story out of the script before it makes it to the shoot so that all that remains is people running about while cool stuff happens and Sherlock Holmes spends about 10 minutes with his top off in make-up then meets a gypsy in France who he had just met in London (I'm just guessing at the cities)...
Aside from the gypsy this describes about 97% of the action films that I watch today and I'm totally sick of it. The first one was good. Really it was. It had a decent story, it built up slowly, it developed the characters, it had some good action scenes and then ended with a climax. I was looking forward to this; I'd held off watching it for over a week until I could guarantee a free two hours... and after I'd seen 5 minutes I knew it was Batman The Dark Night all over again. I walked out of the cinema on that one and I vowed never to go back. I haven't.
I totally understand why people give these diabolical films good marks - they watch them, don't really have any idea what is going on, kind of enjoy the stuff that happens while people do cool stuff and run around and then think that the plot was actually really subtle and sophisticated. Ergo it must have been good. NO. You want a subtle and sophisticated plot go read the Magus. Humanity is doomed. Bring on the rapture :)