In the rush to digitally visualize the unimaginable, writer-director Stephen Sommers has created a sequel that is long on sensation and short on feeling. And it also is quite violent, but cheats death by appearing bloodless. But the constant gunfights and swordplay also yield countless human victims.
Little time is spent investigating character, motive or backstory.
Too, chapters' worth of exposition about Egyptian history are condensed into dense dialogue in which characters explain what's going on to each other, not to us. References to the last film will be familiar to fanatics but may test the memory of the casual viewer and puzzle the uninitiated. But the rest is like computer-generated carpet bombing where one feels anesthetized against a distant target. I love a parade as much as the next person, but this one is dispirited and perfunctory, despite the pyrotechnics. Once you could look at a train in silhouette against a sunrise or a mammoth waterfall in the jungle and marvel.