A whole lot of nothing

Rating: 5/10 (27 August 2002)

This film has some very good things going for it. Mel Gibson gives his best performance to date. Joaquin Phoenix, who played the evil, whiny, wimp in Gladiator convincingly plays the polar opposite in this movie. Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin are very talented young actors. M. Night Shyamalan proves to be a very good director. His camera angles and long shots build suspense very well. With all of that going for it, this is still not a very good movie. As good as Shyamalan is as a director, he is just as bad as a screenwriter. From the get go there is a plothole through the middle of this that makes the whole movie not make any sense. He gives us a priest from a religion that probably doesn't exist that has lost his faith, his ever faithful brother, alien obsessed son, and cute but spooky daughter. We meet the sheriff, the bookstore owner and wife, the man that caused him to lose his faith, and thru flashbacks, his recently deceased wife. There are a few other people in the movie, but not many. Shyamalan gives us an isolated area in Pennsylvania that seems borrowed from an old Twilight Zone episode. The lack of speaking parts makes it seem all the more isolated. And then he blows it by asking us to believe that a global conspiracy may be afoot. He tries to pay homage to so many films from Independence Day and War of the Worlds to E.T. and the famous bigfoot home movie that it comes off as hokey. The final scene just adds to the ever growing list of plotholes. And in the end we find that this far-fetched and plodding film is trying to tell us that life is not an accident and everything happens for a reason. Shyamalan just goes a strange and pointless route to get there. The Sixth Sense this isn't. 5 of 10