Very ingenious, but not without flaws

Rating: 9/10 (2 April 1999)

Even with all the hype about this film, it actually managed to live up to most of its promise. This is a very fast-paced, inventive, and visually stunning film. Every shot is breathtaking and aesthetically brilliant. The costumes, makeup, sets, and casting is top-notch.
There are flaws, however. The movie seems to be constantly just falling short of its promises. Every sequence is amazing, yet you're left with the feeling that perhaps it could have been even better still. The action has been touted as even better than John Woo, yet I found the sequences somewhat derivative of the great Hong Kong director.
Finally, the ending was a cop out. It was *almost* satisfying, but the film decided to get cute. It's like watching an amazing Olympic race in which one runner is so fast that he quickly outdistances all the other runners ... and then, mere inches from the finish line he shows his contempt by not crossing it. "I won this race," he says arrogantly, "and everybody knows it, so why bother crossing the finish line?"
Well, that's what this movie was like. It didn't have to bring everything to a nice tidy ending, true, but it could have done so so easily that it's obnoxious and pretentious that it didn't.
However, even with these flaws, this is a major work. It's inventive and ingenious and a work of art. Even where it rips off old ideas (such as by Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson), it at least has the integrity to come up with its own variations.