Great effects but awfully tame on the action

Rating: 4/10 (10 December 2005)

I must give this movie a great deal of credit for the effort on special effects. They took the time to make the non-existent appear totally real. This was a definite strong point! Unfortunately, the action level in this movie was severely debilitated. Word and phrases like, "to the death," were brandished (perhaps to build up the feeling and the intensity), but when all was said and done, the actual portrayal of the whole book through this movie was rather like my describing the American Revolutionary War process as, "the colonists dumped some tea, England got mad; then the colonists wrote a Constitution and the US became a country." If you're expecting a dynamic and powerful movie, this isn't it! If, on the other hand, you want something lightly entertaining, but not terribly moving, you're right on track here.