don't believe the hype.

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2007)

i sat in the theatre for the entirety of the film waiting for that moment when i would be impressed, moved, shocked, or even just interested.......it never came. once about 30 to 40 minutes in to it is when i first said to myself "this is supposded to be a brilliant and exciting film, and im utterly bored". although subtitles can be blamed for taking some people out of the dramatic or even comedic films i have to date not been affected by subtitles, laughing out loud at "boss of it all", "amelie", and almost coming to tears during "dreamlife of angels". so that was not it. i just found this movie to be un-original, un-inspired, and poorly thought out. which ironicly is what most critics are praising it for. it had all the themes of a normal American thriller; good guys vs bad, government vs artists, big brother listening in, bad guy surprisingly learns lesson from good guy, etc. etc. if keifer sutherland and meg ryan played the lead roles in this with ed harris as the secret agent, this would be blown off by many critics im sure of it. but add some dramatic lighting, foreign launguage requiring subtitles, and set the film a few years back and suddenly all the art houses are flocking to show it. i honestly cant find one redemable quality in this film, one thing that i can say i learned or that they did well or that was new in any way. the plot has been done in different variations before, the actors were horrible (overacting in every scene), and the ending was about as Hollywood as it gets (to go into too much detail would ruin the ending, but basically good guy finds out bad guy, isn't so bad after all). i wish i could end this review by showing some way i share in the perspective of all the other critics who loved this movie, but i just plain cant. i thought it was awful, boring, poorly made, and offensive that so many American theatres are showing and praising it.