Below average

Rating: 3/10 (28 June 2008)

With all the big names that are in this movie, I expected a whole lot more than this. My guess is that they were expecting it to turn out pretty bad, so they got a bunch of good actors to attract the masses. Unfortunately I fell for it as well.
The action was good, it has some pretty decent action scenes. The sad part is that the best one is right at the start, the one you see in the trailer. The acting is decent, but what do you expect with a line up like this.
The storyline is where this movie lacks, big time. Now I don't have any problems with a good no brain action movie, but this is not such a movie. The director keeps trying to make the storyline important, but fails horribly. You can see the plot switches coming, Starwars anyone? It will also leave you with many questions unanswered. Like why don't the normal rules of physics apply for some of these assassins? There are some really disturbing things as well, Wesley's training consists of him getting beaten up, stabbed and recovering in some magical substance. After about 10 minutes of watching the above, he suddenly is a very powerful assassin. But there's more, the assassins get their targets from a loom? Huh, what did I miss? Giving a bullet a curve, OK I can deal with that, but shooting it around a circular room? The end is even more hilarious, apparently our main character equipped more than a thousand rats (rough estimate) with a little explosive watch and loaded them up a garbage truck along with more rats that were not equipped with an explosive. The garbage truck is driven into the HQ of the assassins and the rats spread themselves while he is being shot at by about 6-8 people. None of these people manage to hit him however, I thought they were assassins... After you watch the rats spread for half a minute, they take you back to our main character Wesley who somehow got under the garbage truck (still unharmed..) where he takes cover for the rats that are about to blow up. The whole building blows up.. now I don't know how fast rats can run but I'm pretty sure they are not that fast. Normally I wouldn't really care about these kind of things, but this actually plays a big part in the storyline.
In short, this movie takes itself too serious for it to be taken serious. It's a decent movie if you want to lean back and enjoy some good Matrix style action. But it sure ain't the blockbuster everyone was hoping for.