Lots of promise, but too short

Rating: 3/10 (10 February 2002)

I really want to like this movie. It shows lots of promise, the scenery is beautiful and the actors are first rate. Unfortunately, it falls short on a few fronts:
First, the movie is just too short. A lot of the story just doesn't make sense. I guess the book is more elaborate, but the movie should at least be twice as long to help give the story some kind of flow instead of making it look like more or less unrelated scenes stitched together.
And then there are the fight scenes. They're just no good. Nowadays that we have movies like The Matrix, fight scenes that change so quickly that you have no idea what's going on just doesn't cut it anymore. I had no idea what was going on during the fights, who was fighting against whom or why anything was happening at all (actually, I had that feeling during most of the movie).
If you have an hour and a half to waste and this movie is on TV, by all means watch it, but don't bother buying or renting the DVD.