a movie for guys who like movies!

Rating: 9/10 (16 June 2002)

John Woo may possibly be the best director working in Hollywood today. He has a perfect sense of balletic style to his action scenes unseen in this country since Sam Peckinpah. He also seems to derive a lot of inspiration from Italian filmmakers. He has the best slow motion since Enzo G. Castellari and the use of zoom lens since Umberto Lenzi. Blend this technique into an ultra-violent war film and you get quite an entertaining package.
People interested in well-told stories and believability should skip this one. This movie is far from realistic with lead actor Cage easily mowing down scores of Japanese soldiers without even looking at them. Every American soldier killed in the movie takes at least 2-3 bullet hits before biting the dust (eventually) while the Japanese soldiers instantly die once a shot is fired in their vague direction. However, the film has lots of action, lots of killings, and actually a couple fairly suspenseful scenes to keep you more-than awake. Those of you B-movie fans out there will be pleased to see the triumphant return of stock war footage in place of cheesy CGI for the battleship scenes... though there is light use of CGI later in the film for the airplanes.
This is the true victory of style over content. Although the film wanders from its original path and gets lost in the action, you'll be far too entertained to care. Those of you viewers who are like me and like to turn your brain off and just watch hundreds of humans blow each other to bits, those of you who were angered by how WE WERE SOLDIERS kept cutting back to "the home front", should waste no time in seeing this film. It's a classic action-packed and violent war film which pulls no punches and has no romance... just the way we like it. The story of Navajo code-talking is negligible and barely scratched, but the acting is decent, photography and set design excellent, and action/stuntwork absolutely spectacular.
The film is mildly repetitive and overlong, but a lot of us out here like this kind of film that way. Now if only they'd make a film presenting the war from the Japanese perspective... (besides TORA! TORA! TORA!, which was only 1/2 Japanese anyway)