Bad enough to leave the theatre

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2003)

This review is a little bit belated, but a movie this bad cannot go unmentioned. I saw this movie in the theatres when it first came out. What makes this movie so utterly awful is that fact that you can actually see Woo trying to make a good movie. He tries for the war angle, the brotherhood angle, the internal conflict angle...and he fails miserably. Woo looked like he couldn't figure out what kind of movie he was making: a war epic, an action movie, a bonds-of-men flick, etc. Woo was really over his head on this one.
Cage is unwatchable. Slater is embarassing. The cinematography is trite. The special effects are straight out the an Art Institue senior class project. The script should've gone back to the writers for an overhaul. The score was uninspired. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
Rarely does a bad move affect me to the point that I can remember the badness of the movie, almost a year later, with such passion that I can write a whole negative review on it. They should show this movie to film students as punishment, or as an example of how good actors and a good director will shrivel when they have no guidance, chemistry, script or a clue.
* / ***** 1 star out of 5