Bluffing Itself

Rating: 4/10 (25 May 2006)

This was far busier than it needed to be, stuffing in drama, morality and comedy relief. Since neither of the former two motifs can be taken seriously, we have to look at this as a comedy.
The way this is centered on Jackman and way he is directed to play this puts me in mind of Eastwood in "Coogan's Bluff"...the attempt is to insert a smart aleck into a fish out of water situation and just let him crack wise at every opportunity.
The problem is, Singer didn't understand "Coogan's" structure...in addition to the defined jokester, that movie had defined targets (remember the ludicrous 'Pigeon Toed Orange Peel'?) and both were at a distance from the audience. This movie can't distinguish the targets from the audience: the moral is "we all have to get along with each others' differences" and the audience is expected to empathize.
The morality play propped up by Stewart and McKellan is a sort-of MLK versus Malcolm X philosophical debate. It's not offensive, but it is unnecessary. The whole point of it dissolves like the erstwhile senator.
One item of interest is the camera's movement around Jackman during the Statue of Liberty fight; it rotates through 360 degrees in slow motion and only at the end of the shot do we find our perspective again...if only there had been more of these *film* ideas and less comic book flatness and penny-ante moralizing, we'd have had something to remember.