Oh dear...

Rating: 3/10 (8 January 2001)

What a shame. How can such a well written, well acted and visually exciting film be such a dud? The problem is what lies beneath (so to speak)... nothing. Or very little at any rate. It is essentially a high concept action movie with the world's longest back story phase. It's rather like watching the feature length episode of 70's kids shows (6 Million Dollar Man etc.) they felt the need to produce in order to help us poor brainless viewers. You knew you had to sit through it in order to get to the good stuff. I realise that M. Night Shyamalan isn't attempting to make The Matrix and indeed it isn't necessarily action sequences that the film is missing. It is substance of any kind. The characters are super-thin, the plot is spun out well beyond what it can bear and beyond a single 'Look out! Behind you!' moment towards the end of the film, the viewer's pulse rate is rarely troubled.
M. Night Shyamalan presumably set out to lend the film the feel of a comic book. The problem is he succeeded. It's just that comic books don't take 2 hours to read.