Not much there

Rating: 4/10 (19 September 2006)

So is this a mystery film, a fantasy film, or what? Well, rather than successfully blurring the boundaries of genre, this film just seems to be a confused muddle of several genres, including the period piece. It's actually hard to speak in much detail about the film without spoiling it. What I will say is that while I enjoyed the character who played the main role in the film, I felt that some more focus on the other characters might have made the goings-on more meaningful. I also felt that the film suffers greatly right up until the ending, as it starts to appear even more pointless than it really is just for the sake of an interesting ending. While the "German" accents of the Austrian characters are actually not half-bad, they are still woefully unnecessary (if you want it to be authentic, film it in German!). Finally, there's the "small" matter of using Asian people as props in search of some mystical shorthand; I think it would be disingenuous to say that this is only supposed to work within the film. Overall, while not a painful experience, it was largely forgettable and not as clever as it was meant to be.