Not for the feint of heart

Rating: 3/10 (19 February 2006)

The good - Very stylish, well shot, high production values. The art direction was great and although it really does not break any new ground, it is certainly way above average for cinematography and style The photography is very crisp.
The bad - Too much pointless violence, not enough plot. I sat there waiting for something to happen, often in vain. Lots of action took place on the screen, but it seemed to be more of the filler type of action and did not advance the story. For example, a woman hold up her hands in surrender. The bad guy (and I use the term very loosely) empties his machine pistol into her. Cut to a silhouette of him emptying his machine pistol into her. She falls to the ground, and he empties his machine pistol into her corpse. As if she could be any more dead. All her death did was give the hero the chance to sneak up on the bad guys - but not all the different camera angles and two magazines worth.
Violence in this movie is like sex in a porn film - hold tenuous plot elements together. Contrast this movie with Kill Bill vol 1, which is very violent and stylized, but is effective and entertaining.
The dialog is also pretty bad. I like people to talk like people would - even in highly stylized movies like film noir, the dialog needs to seem natural. But the dialog here seems to be stilted and unreal in the mold of a George Lucas script, though the director is good and gets better performances than in Star Wars 1&2.
Other aspects of the movie I am cool with. No one is really good, everyone seems to be a sadist, kinda like the film noir atmosphere.
But the production values just cannot make up for the lack of plot and lousy dialog.