Hmm, not so good.

Rating: 6/10 (9 March 2009)

I saw this because of the reviews on this site. I had seen the trailer and dismissed it as another DC Comics/Comicon/X Men/Dark Knight/you name it wanna-be and I've seen enough for a while thanks. But the reviews were up there at 8.5 so I spent my bucks and went along expecting to be surprised. I was surprised by the amount of gore. The sex scene surprised me too. It also surprised my kids. Unfortunately those weren't pleasant surprises - and I am definitely not a prude but the sex and so much violence were so blatantly gratuitous that I really wondered what the other reviewers had seen in the movie. The plot was indecipherable for the first 15-20 minutes then finally one of the characters explained something and I got the general idea - ex-super (but not really super) heroes with character flaws...um... retired because of a law forbidding the wearing of masks. Richard Nixon was in there somewhere, too. And now in 1985 - the 'now' - of the movie...with Nixon still President... um right - someone was killing the ex-superheroes. But then the next character explained something else and I lost it again. Meanwhile one of the ex-superheroes isn't ex because he's building some energy thing to save the world while Russia and the US are about to destroy each other... he glows blue and talks like an announcer in a shopping mall and he wants to live on Mars.... It makes me weary just trying to sort that much to write it down and that's just the back-story, sort of... Wow. Well, anyway, I thought it was all just way over the top, way over-produced, some occasional good acting but way too gory, way too jarring for no good reason at all, way, way WAY too corny in the last 20 minutes. And just really a waste of good popcorn. One reviewer compared this movie to Brazil and that prompted me to see it. He must have meant the country because he couldn't possibly have meant the movie.