Blah

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 2001)

It would probably be okay for an airplane movie: Stephen
Sommers has a better grasp of constructing a scene and a set
piece than, say, Dominic Sena (SWORDFISH) or Simon West
(TOMB RAIDER). He clearly has studied each and every frame,
and especially every music cue, in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
and TEMPLE OF DOOM about a hundred times; and--perhaps just
filtered through Spielberg--he seems to have boned up on his
David Lean as well. This was probably the only blockbuster of the
summer that didn't largely fill me with the urge to get up and leave.
That's about the best that can be said for it; the movie really makes
you appreciate the acting acumen of Harrison Ford and Karen
Allen. If the movie is remembered for anything, it will probably be
as the death knell of CGI-overkill movies: you just can't look at this
much "epic" stuff that so clearly seems to have started on a laptop.
It's like watching RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with all the effects
replaced by goony animated vignettes. One heart-stopping
moment of beauty, though: a charging horde of thousands of
sword-wielding dog-men turns, in a blink, to a landscape-wide
hurricane of black dust.