7/10 Excellent acting, respectable dialog, terrific artistic presentation, bad direction, bad soundtrack, lacks momentum.

Rating: 7/10 (14 May 2004)

THE GOOD: The acting was as good as I would expect from anyone. The characters were presented in a consistent way. The script was good, definitely held a few nice touches and avoided a few auto-complete phrases. The action, generally, was done well.
THE BAD: The soundtrack was annoying. Bah. Tried to be 'epic'. It was botched. The directing... This movie has no momentum. Just when you start to care what's going on, just when something interesting is happening or is being said, something mundane and pointless follows and you're back to zero. There was way too much time spent looking at ordinary things happening, large groups of people moving around, or pan shots of scenery. We all know that ordinary things happen and that large groups of people must move around. Normally this would be ok, except that such things killed the momentum of the movie and wasted precious screen time.
SUMMARY: Generally I liked the movie for what it was, and I'm very very glad that the actors did a great job with a fair script; they saved the picture. 7/10