Good with great parts; could have been a great film.

Rating: 7/10 (2 April 1999)

Ack! How frustrating. The movie had a great idea, great visual style, and an interesting, twisting plot... if only they had gotten rid of the many bad parts to leave us with the unbelievably great stuff in between, we could have had a truly wonderful film.
The fight scenes were like a super-stylish mix of Woo-style gunplay utilizing (and well, too) the new spin-around-a-still-scene technology seen in those Gap and Coke ads, and Hong Kong style kung-fu (Not a surprise since they got Yuen Woo-Ping, a veteran Hong Kong director dating back to the original Drunken Master in '78, to choreograph the fights). And those scenes are amazing - really. The high-speed photography was absolutely beautiful, and mixed with the unreal camera movements, gave me an action experience unlike any other I've ever seen, from America's greatest action/sci-fi flicks, to Hong Kong's recent gunfests and kung-fu extravaganzas. It's new, it's exciting, it's great, and it will copied unabashedly in the future (best to see it while it's fresh).
Add the audio/visual perfection to an interesting plotline and passable-to-good acting from everybody, and you've got the making of a great show.
Unfortunately, there is some pretty downright lame dialogue, a rather slow expository section in the middle, and some "bad CG creatures versus the CG spacecraft (or whatever) in the CG set" scenes that are totally passable, but I've seen a million times before and detract from the completely novel, brilliant fight scenes mentioned earlier. They also kind of fart up the pacing of the later parts of the film, don't add anything substantial to the story, and are generally uninteresting.
Overall, a totally enjoyable experience with scenes that will certainly be floating around in my head for weeks to come.