A tiresome disappointment

Rating: 4/10 (23 October 2002)

I wanted to like this movie. I read the book in junior high and I was quite surprised when I found out they were making a film. I figured it would just be a knockoff of "Saving Private Ryan". I wish it had been.
All this movie is a one disconnected scene after another. The movie alights on one unimportant character after another without laying down much if any story line. The almost constant mental voiceovers, far from helping you understand what's going on (a la "Blade Runner") only annoys the viewer. First, you don't know who's voice you're hearing. Second, it's a bunch of drug-induced, cryptic, fragmented deep-thoughts that you struggle to make fit in with what's on the screen.
Big stars come and go. The guy who's the main character (you tell yourself) gets killed. You see all these scenes of various "Man-on-the-Canal" scenes. Then it ends. If it weren't for the battle scenes, this would be a total loss. As it is, I wouldn't watch it again if the remote were broken and I were down with malaria.