lack of a script , a believable world and characters makes this a series of emotionally empty great looking cgi filled action scenes with nothing to connect them

Rating: 3/10 (28 June 2008)

(THIS COMMENT HAS SPOILERS)
Timur Bekmambetov, who scored with the Night Watch films comes to America (again-the first time he was working for Roger Corman) and makes a visually arresting but other wise incredibly stupid action film.
The plot of the film has Wesley Gibson (James Mc Avoy), an account manager who is as put upon as they come, recruited by a band of assassins in order to be trained to kill the man who killed his father,, one of the men who had leading the assassins. There are some twists and turns but mostly its an excuse for some really good looking set pieces, that are worth the effort to see them on TV when this finally hits cable. As for the twists and turns, there are maybe two' and they are so late in the game as to be purely an excuse to keep the movie going until its reached the two hour mark.
This is a a seventy minute film stretched to two hours for no good reason. The simplistic retelling of the plot is how simple the film is. It actually removes any clichéd notions of films with similar plots by excising any notions of exposition. It does this because the script doesn't really provide any sort of story or real characters. Part of the problem is that the film has a series of set pieces that take away from any notion of character development, there is no time when you have to get to the next fight or training scene. So no one,not even McAvoy arc, they just are. Sure McAvoy's character changes but its as if someone flipped a switch not grows overtime. Whats worse is the fact that the world the characters live in isn't real, not even remotely. Only the characters can do super things and they do so in away that isn't believable, we really don't know why or how other than "training". It makes no sense.(actually they cut out that this is based on super villains vs superhero story)
Actually nothing makes sense even its own twisted film world. In the Night Watch films there are similar stunts and action, but a world is created where all of the weirdness could happen. Here there is nothing, these people exist (and haven't been found out despite doing fantastical things, and we have to take it on faith) and we have to accept that and everything else the film tells us. You see its not just in the action scenes, whole concepts in the film just ring as false because there is no reason for it. The Loom for example. Worst of all is the healing bath. Shades of Ra's Al Ghul's Lazarus bath, which is used so that McAvoy can get the stuffing kicked out of him over and over again. Its a cheat of the worst sort. The film makers have asked us to believe way too much. I can suspend disbelief up to a point but you can't give me 12 things to believe and not give me any means of support.
To be certain the action scenes are great. To be honest they are pure CGI but they still are incredible pieces of visual ballet. The problem is that because the story is lacking I can only admire the visuals I can't love them because there is no reason to take them as anything other then as set pieces unconnected to anything.
On some level the motion and pretty pictures entertained me, but at the same time I felt I wasted a couple hours of my life. Honestly I haven't felt this bad in a long time, even with all the trash grade z movies I watch.This was two hours I will never get back. What makes it really painful is the action works, the acting is there, but the script was clearly stuck in the word processor.
Wait for cable.