Long, boring, confusing and ultimately unsatisfying.

Rating: 2/10 (17 January 1999)

I suppose this movie would be appreciated by cinema professors, Ivory League poets and those who sell celluloid by the foot. For the rest of us, it is an exercise (a long exercise) in boredom.
First of all, nothing happens for the first 45 minutes, and even after some (very good) battle scenes, I had a difficult time figuring out where the movie was going and exactly what it was about. The director attempted to involve us in the lives of a number of characters, but in the end I really didn't care about any of them. There was no weaving of sub-plots, no good character development, nothing but a mishmash of scenes and narrative pretending to be profound. The cameo appearances by big-name actors were totally out of place, which made the movie even more off-putting.
If you loved the Vietnam War movie "Apocalypse Now" you might like this one. I didn't and I don't. Both appear to be attempts by the director to be artsy and profound. But as far as I'm concerned, both movies are on the weird side. My wife and I looked at our watches a number of times during this movie, a good indication of how little the film captivated us.