Appalling

Rating: 1/10 (24 June 2008)

This is the most appalling film I have ever seen. How did so much money and basically decent talent go into making such a gratuitously violent, bloody, pointless, stupid, evil piece of junk? I went along to a preview with a critic friend (who also hated it), and wasn't aware until the end credits that it was based on a comic book, which is not surprising given the ridiculous storyline and characters. Besides a huge number of men (or should I say "targets"), there are exactly three female characters in this film. One is the "amusingly" fat office manager who bedevils the hero, one is his cheating girlfriend, and one is the skeletal and extremely weird Angelina Jolie. On the plus side, only one of them shoots 850,000 bullets into people and bonds with the hero over his newfound ability to kill strangers. Guess which? I don't have a problem with violent films, but this was just so over-the-top and pointless, and not in an interesting way. It made me depressed to be human. Imagine if this were the sole surviving artifact of our civilization. Terence Stamp, I am disappointed in you.