brilliant visuals can't sustain lack of substance

Rating: 4/10 (26 July 2005)

For the first 10 minutes or so the awesome visuals in this film completely blew me away, and I was prepared to really love it. The imagery and attention to detail was excellent. Really liked the fact that they had managed to recreate the comic book images. But....then I got bored. I like films to be visually interesting (it is a visual medium after all) - but there needs to be something more to it than that - either interesting story, thought provoking idea or attention grabbing dialogue. This film does not have it - and i found the "cleverness" of th visuals distracting - there are only so many times you can think "gosh I'm impressed by this". Then I started to find it repetitive - same images / same lack of story and same (admitedly cool the first time) ultra violence. The incessant use of voice over (to try and explain what was happening) was too much. So by the end my abiding emotion was boredom and frustration. So if you need some story or message this film will not sustain interest. There are great visuals, but for me that wasn't enough. I wish someone would make as awesomely visually interesting a film of a graphic novel / comic with more to say for itself - series of Sandman films anyone?