The Eagle (2011)

The Eagle: A Channing Tatum Joint is a stressful movie.  With so much moral ambiguity it's hard to know who to root for...the oppressive Romans who seek to rule all of the British Isles, or the native Britons who dress up like lunatics and murder for fun?  Never mind that the movie just assumes you'd be on the side of the Romans, because the filmmakers are too stupid to realize that their main character isn't even slightly sympathetic.

Deliverance Banjo Kid all grown up on 'roids Channing Tatum is all the star power The Eagle has to offer, which should give you an indication of the movie's quality.  From Fighting to GI Joe Rise of Cobra to Dear John, Channing has been trying as hard as he can to be the Steven Seagal of the 21st century.  The squinting, the mumbling, the cavalcade of instantly-forgettable performances...it's all there.  He just needs to get old, join up with some obscure Asian religion and become a truly overweight shitbag cop and the cycle is complete. 

Oh yeah, the plot.  So apparently in Roman times they made these giant golden eagles that vanguard forces of the army would take into newly-conquered lands.  Channing's dad was a super cool Roman general guy who decided to take one of these eagles into enemy territory and was promptly torn apart by the super-evil Briton savages who selfishly didn't want to be enslaved.  The Romans build Hadrian's wall to keep the filthy paleskins at bay, forming what you might call a Green Zone that's a safe refuge for the civilized soldiers in the midst of a war-torn land.  The jarhead (or brush-head) Roman soldiers find themselves led by the son of the failure who lost the Eagle.  Lucky for them, Channing has super-human hearing due to the fact that he has severely reduced vision from all that squinting and wakes them all up in the middle of the night to fend off a surprise Briton ambush.

The director must have realized at this point that no one in the audience gives a fuck so he has the Briton leader, a babbling Druid, take some Roman soldiers hostage.  They drag one up to Hadrian's wall and behead him.  Pretty gruesome, eh?  Not really, since The Eagle is PG-13 so retarded teenagers could potentially pay money for a ticket.  Any time in the movie that someone is about to get beheaded, eviscerated or otherwise brutally murdered the camera turns away. 

So this turns out to be a ruse, and Channing's phalanx of wannabe Spartan warriors who went out to save the other survivors gets set upon by war chariots.  After a magic spear throw that kills the Druid leader Channing gets hit by a 2-ton out-of-control chariot that knocks him out and cuts his leg a little.

He goes back to the Green Zone and gets some stone-age surgery which turns him into a cripple.  While rehabbing his leg he visits the local bread and circus deathmatch where the daily matchup is the two-face helmeted gladiator guy from Gladiator versus a shrimpy 98-pound Briton slave who refuses to fight.  As the Gladiator is about to strike the killing blow the audience screams "Death!  DEATH!!" with their thumbs down.  Channing has an epiphany and throws his thumb up, yelling "No!  Life!  LIFE, GUYS!"  which totally turns the mood of the crowd around.  The Briton whose life he saved becomes his slave, swearing to be loyal to him forever.

Channing decides to go on an epic quest to find the eagle his father lost while being devoured by cannibal Scots.  He takes his Briton slave up past Hadrian's wall into the wilderness.  At every opportunity Channing treats his slave buddy like shit.  He orders him around, tells him about how his people need to be crushed by the Empire and squints at him accusingly.  Channing doesn't even speak the local language and if anyone figured out he was a Roman soldier his innards would be used for haggis and blood pudding.  The slave is his only hope for survival, but he's still an elitist dick to him.  You would think that as soon as Channing closes his eyes to rest the slave would cut his throat and head home.  Maybe it was really hard for the slave to tell if Channing was asleep or not, which is understanding.

Channing finds some old Roman soldiers who escaped the massacre back in his father's time.  They have all gone native and no one knows where the eagle is.  The only thing that points Channing in the right direction is praying to Zeus, wherafter he hears an eagle cry and follows it to the North.  I didn't even make that part up.

Channing and the slave come across the Seal People, an ultra-savage group of Britons who wear grey bodypaint and bone armor 24/7.  Channing's slave tricks them into believing that Channing is actually HIS Roman slave.  Channing is unable to deduce this ruse and instead becomes enraged and calls the Briton a traitor, attempting to kill him with his bare hands.  The Seal People then proceed to beat his ass, repeatedly.  "We'll help you keep your slave in line" they helpfully offer.

After being humiliated for a while at the hospitality of the Seal People, Channing becomes witness to one of their heathen Druid rituals.  They all get drunk on goat piss and hallucinate while their deer-antlered shaman dances around in front of him.  And what does the shaman have as his magic staff, but the golden eagle.  As soon as he sees the eagle Channing tries to assault the shaman and promptly gets his ass beat again by the Seal People.

Channing's Briton slave then reveals that he was faking the whole time and he's still indentured for life to his Roman master.  They grab the eagle and take off on horseback.  The only one left in the village who's not stoned off his ass from last night's ritual is a little kid who is sorry to see the two leave.  The slave gives the kid a little wooden fish to remember them by and to not wake anyone up.


After their horses' legs break in the peat moss of the Scottish Highlands, it's a foot race against the Seal People.  Everyone back in ancient times had the ability to run for days on end.  It was a survival tactic that allowed them to hunt wooly mammoths, one which disappeared with the invention of polyunsaturated fats.  Channing's wound starts to give him trouble and he goes into septic shock.  His slave runs off back to Hadrian's wall in a stupid attempt to get reinforcements from the Romans.  In case you were wondering, Channing still treats him like a dick.  He very begrudgingly gives the slave his freedom in order for him to leave his side to go find help.


So the Seal People who have been running for a week finally catch up with Channing, who takes time off from puking his guts out to somehow be in fighting shape again.  Magically, his former slave comes back with all the disgraced old Roman warriors who had lost the eagle to begin with, their armor and weapons still intact.  "Defend the Eagle!"  Channing commands.


But the Seal People have one last surprise.  The director must have remembered that at this point absolutely no one would be sympathetic to Channing and are most likely actively rooting for the Seal People to kill him, so he tries to demonize the savage Britons one last time.  The Seal People have brought that little kid from the village, the one who got the wooden fish from Channing's slave.  They then slit his throat (off-camera) to show just how hardcore they are.  It's cool that these guys sprinted for a hundred miles with a little kid in tow just to make a point (and wipe out one of their small village's only male heirs), but whatever.  A slow-mo 300 Spartans fight ensues where all the Seal People and old Romans die and Channing is branded Best Roman Ever.  Hooray!

Moral of the Story:  Pray to Zeus, and you'll get shit done.

Jakob The Liar (1999)

Hulu has recently seen a large influx of free full length movies. This old Robbin Williams movie was my first choice out of them. He plays a Jewish man stuck in a Polish ghetto where he and all the other Juden have become accustomed to scratching out a meager existence. Although they still have their shops and homes, the ghetto is closed to the outside and the people have become destitute and constantly hungry. Suicide is rampant. One day, for being outside after dark, he reports to the commendant's office for routine corporal punishment and overhears a war bulletin on the radio. The Nazi oppressors are losing ground to the Russians, and the front line approaches from only 400 kilometers away.

The approach of the Red Army means impending salvation for the Jews. He tells this story to his friends to cheer them up and eventually the rumor of rescue spreads around the ghetto folk. The suicides stop. The people ask Jakob for more information about the Soviet advance, but he has none, so he makes up stories to give them the hope and drive to keep them living for as long as possible. He uses extravagant stories and humor to...wait a minute isn't this is the same story behind Patch Adams and Good whatever Vietnam and every other fucking Robbie Williams movie? Does Robin Williams ever expand his acting repertoire ever?

Anyway in the end, well, everyone pretty much knows what happens in the end. These historical events are common knowledge. But they say, "It's easier living the lie."

Too depressing for casual viewing.
Rating: 50%

The Mosquito Coast (1986)

They literally do not make movies like this anymore.

The Eighties was a decade whose artistic values and contributions are, in this age, unattainable. In some ways (fashion and hairstyles, mostly) this is a good thing. In most ways, however, it's unfortunate. We live in a digital age, and looking back on films from the Eighties you can see how they are distinctly analog. There's a grittiness and a realism to them that doesn't exist in today's era of CGI special effects and editing techniques.

Mosquito Coast is a Harrison Ford film that is rarely mentioned nowadays, due to the fact that Ford has been making blockbuster movies for 30 years and some of his smaller works get lost in the panoply of Star Wars, Indiana Joneses, Fugitives and Air Force Ones.

The story is based around Ford's character, an obsessive genius who lives as an inventor. He rages against 80's American culture, decrying its absence of character and values. He gives passionat speeches to his son, River Phoenix, about the banality of its consumer culture, fast food restaurants, its soulless music and the laziness of its populace. He also predicts America's imminent doom by atomic warfare, which is always a good thing to tell your kids.

When his employer refuses to acknowledge the genius of his newest machine, a Doc Brown-ish device that makes ice from fire, he gives up and dislodges his entire family to go live in the fictional country of La Mosquetera, deep amongst the jungles of South Africa where they will build their own civilization and live by their own means. A lot of it involves convincing the locals, a strange ethnic mix of blacks, hispanics and native indians, to obey his whims.

Ford's motivations are very Objectivist, but the fact that he's a lunatic keep it from being a Rand-fest. What follows is a mix of Swiss Family Robinson and Heart of Darkness. This movie blew my mind, and the zeal of Ford's character is amazing to watch. I can't remember another movie where he has put this much effort into a character.

Men of the Yamato (2005) 男たちの大和

This is about the WW2 Pacific theatre. As most people already know, the Imperial Navy lost badly to the American combined fleet and had their prized flagship sunk late in the war. This is basically Pearl Harbor in reverse.

From a strictly American viewpoint, this was ridiculous. Most of the movie is spent talking about ritual suicide and all these fucking weird things the Japanese culture is known for. Far too much screen time is spent watching people yell stuff like "YOIIIII" or screaming "goodbye world" off the side of the ship.

What about the good points? People persisting with anti-Japanese sentiment will find this movie appealing simply because a bunch of Japs die in droves. It's similar to watching the second half of Titanic, but with a ship chock full of screaming Japanese men. You get to see people die in every conceivable way. The naval combat action, and the whole point of this movie, was merely satisfactory.

The great thing about watching the fighting from the opposing side is that you get to see them lose. Losing a war is many times more gruesome than winning and is therefore many times more interesting to watch. Many people, especially Chinese nationals, derive enjoyment from watching Japs die because of lingering bitterness over unresolved war atrocities. For these, most of the culpability falls to the Japanese Army. The Japanese Navy was much less oppressive. Nonetheless, both the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy are usually held equally responsible. For this undue blame, I think those guys deserve a break.

Story Rating: 0%
Action Rating: 75%

The Sniper (2009) 神鎗手

lol this movie has been posted everywhere. This is the first time I've watched an HK movie without subtitles, so I probably missed some of the subtext, but I get the picture. It starts with a bunch of guys on a Chinese SWAT team that are competing to become the best sniper. They would say stuff like "chinese china bunch of chinese TOP SHOOTER! more chinese" and I would smirk. It's not long before friendly competition turns into enraged rivalry during real police action and soonafter they turn their sniper rifles on each other. It's so dramatic!
This is also the returning debut of Edison Chen after fleeing HK in disgrace due to the untimely leak of his homemade porn. He looks good. Acting still sucks though. Thing is, when I see him on the screen I just can't stop thinking about the photos of his sexual tryst ahahaha they got him good. Stuffed bear in the background watching them bahaha!

Rating: 40%

Blade 2 (2002)

Fuck yeah Blade. Let's say you were in the mood for some violence. Lots of chops, shots, and bloodletting fire. You don't care where or why it happens, simply that it does and that it happens instantly. Hands down, Wesley Snipes is your man. Blade was an "okay" movie for it's day, at the time directly competing with the not yet completed Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Matrix sequels. Those two movie series prevented Blade from being more popular than it was, making the Blade series a forgotten favorite.

When you go back and watch old movies, sometimes you get surprised by what you find in the cast. Here, I found a young Donnie Yen as a vampiric blademaster. His character is a mute (implied, as he had no lines) and has a shortlived and unsatisfying role. Basically, even though Donnie Yen was a better choreographer than the rest of the cast, he ended up with a smaller role. The first (and last) move he pulls out is the HK classic "no shadow kick". What the hell? The director must have looked at his demo reel and said, "yeah just do that move and gtfo". Ten minutes later he is vampire food.


To date, Donnie has never had another scene with fucking eyeliner.
It also struck me on how dumb the story is. Full of holes and mostly a distraction, the plot of Blade 2 was very weak. For example, the prevailing bad guy shoots Blade into a swimming pool of blood and then expects him to be dead. Common, everyone knows that if Blade receives blood, he gets fully healed. How can the bad guy be that stupid? So forget the story, just watch the action and move on.

Rating: 60%

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

It's hard to turn a kid's book containing about a paragraph worth of simple sentences in it into a feature-length film. Which is why it's necessary to take each of the simple, dialogue-less monsters from the storybook, give them interesting and meaningful names like Douglass and Judith, turn them into complex characters with psychological issues and wait for your Oscar.

What surprises me is that apparently the original author of the book is totally O.K. with this. Well, actually I'm more surprised that he's still alive. So now he gets to see his creation warped into a very non-kid friendly movie directed by a guy who normally directs music videos. And he's O.K. with it. So I guess I am too!

So what do the kids who go to see this movie learn? Here's a smattering of things I remember...um, teachers are dicks for telling kids the sun is going to eventually explode, single moms are crappy parents who raise kids that are nuts and like to dress up like foxes and hallucinate about monsters, it's not very nice to destroy your friends' houses, and interpersonal relationships are fundamentally flawed and will always fail on multiple levels if given time...and if you're a monster.

Demolition Man (1993)

When looking for movies online you often get a dichotomy of very old and very new. Following the release of a new movie, people post them everywhere, despite the movie industry's vigilant attempts to remove them. Older movies, while uploaded much less often by their niche fangroups, do not get targeted by piracy police, causing them to build up over time on the internet.

Such is the case with many early Sylvester Stallone movies. This one starts in a super fucked up city (caption says "Los Angeles, 1996") that's rife with mega-crime. Shit is on fire and all these people are getting killed, so Stallone steps in to administer justice. Just 20 minutes into the plot, and Stallone is convicted of manslaughter for failing to save the hostages and gets sentenced to 70 years in a cryogenic prison. His mass murdering nemesis (Wesley Snipes) gets the same sentence. Upon their release, they wake up to a crime-free society where everyone is a huge wuss. The cops are too nerfed to stop Wesley Snipes so they bring in tuff guy Stallone.

Basically, this started as a Rambo movie and quickly turned into Judge Dredd. The people all talk like school children and Stallone is the only remotely normal person. Every time he says "FUCK", a buzzer in the background goes off and says "John Spartan you have been fined one credit for violation of the verbal morality statute", but he just keeps talking like nothing happened. Then he follows Wesley Snipes into the museum of guns where all the plasma rifles are loaded, and they fight in the Hall of Violence while making funny insults at each other. Yeah. Stallone's voice is funny too.

Rating: 75%

Turbo the Movie (2009)

http://www.turbothemovie.com/
A friend of mine that likes really stupid videos sent me this. You can watch this piece of shit at that link if you want. I actually suggest you just skip through it to see if you can piece together the story from little evenly distributed 2 second snippets because it's better that way. Let me tell you, this production is an embarrassment. Name any evaluational metric for a movie, be it acting skill, special effects quality, or story writing, and you will find that Turbo (the movie) fails at them all.

One of the recent trends I've noticed on the internet is a niche of Asian style made-for-asians-by-asian-american movies. I watched a few of these and they've all been fairly lousy. For some reason, Asian people just don't know how to produce movies (unless you're from Hong Kong which pretty much guarantees that you're a brilliant filmmaker). Asian Americans in California frequently complain about having to work harder than everyone else. Well I say that when it comes to movies, they're not working nearly hard enough. The fact that an asian kid beats a white kid at sports in your story doesn't make it a good movie.

Rating: 10%

Shinjuku Incident (2009)

After I saw the trailer for this I was fixed on it. Could this really be a movie with Jackie Chan that wasn't retarded? Could this actually be a movie about Chinese-Japanese relations that didn't involve rage filled arguments about contemporary history? Yes it had all of those things and more. I guess when Jackie Chan doesn't get a shitty writer his acting can really shine. He plays a poor Chinese peasant that immigrates illegally to Japan in the 90s. The Chinese are to Japan as Mexicans are to California. Impoverished, loud, and a public nuisance, they're constantly begging for work or being harried by police.

Japanese society fosters high levels of racism to the Chinese. Both local gangs and police officials give them lots of trouble so they must band together to form their own gangs to help them survive and compete in their new environment. Above all, Jackie wants to do things honestly. His virtuosity takes him very far among the big players in Tokyo. He brings his fellow Chinese the security and prosperity they crave but upsets the established order of Yakuza and Taiwanese gangs. This is where Jackie's acting is at it's best. His character is simplistic but not stubborn, impressive but not exaggerated.

Jackie Chan is normally such a carefree guy that it's very disturbing to see him take part in this much brutality.
Rating: 100%

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Okay to begin with, there's too much character development in this movie. I can't believe that I'm saying that, given the already lackluster storyline, but nobody is going to remember that shit for a movie like this. They try to stuff the plane with a diverse character set to spice up the story, but honestly speaking, that isn't what the audience wants. I say kill them all. Blah blah blah. GET TO THE SNAKES ALREADY!
In the next phase, Sam Jackson fights snakes + angry mob. By this time, he's already produced several meme worthy lines in an attempt to get the passengers to shutup. Then he says, "Give these people air!" and that's where the memory file in my neural net processor ends.

There are 2 buff chinese men that do some kind of kung fu or stunt shit in this movie. This is out of a total of 2 chinese men. That's a proportion of 100%.
Rating: 50%

The Medallion (2003)

I remember a time, perhaps in the 90's when Jackie Chan was revered as a brilliant stuntman with titles like Rumble in the Bronx and Supercop under his belt. But now his movies are -what?- slapstick comedy mystical fictions with Jackie Chan making panicky noises the whole time.

Out of his ensemble of his half-assed joke movies, this is one ranks relatively low. He teams up with this aloof Scottish detective that is scared of everything like he has some kind of horrible mental disorder. He would turn corners or open doors, see something unexpected, and scream "whoaaaaaa!!" like 50 or so times in the movie. The Englishman also has an asian supermodel wife. That's weird because at the same time Jackie is flirting with this other caucasian supermodel who is the coworker of the Scottish guy. So he, uh, switched wives or, I'm not sure they know, what?

Anyway in the end the Chinese dragons do some magical shit and Jackie Chan becomes immortal. So, that's cool. The movie ends with Jackie running 100 miles an hour and going "yay!".

Rating: 20%

The Weather Man (2005)

Another great Nicholas Cage movie. I can't even believe that I used to think he was a bad actor because I keep watching his movies and he nails the role every time. I must have mistaken him for a bad actor because of his unenthusiastic face and boring voice, and most of all his embarrassing acting in The Wicker Man. At face value, Nick Cage is unremarkable. Yet, if you roll with his style a bit, his simplistic and unassuming personality seems very appropriate. His narrations here are brilliant. The combination of his disparaging face and his flat voice delivers a succinct but illuminating message.

This movie is highly underrated. Nick Cage's depressing appearance goes well with the fact that his acting career at the time was sucking.
Rating: 80%

Four Brothers (2005)

I didn't really like this. I can tell its a quality movie because Mark Wahlberg is in it, but I've been watching some really good movies lately and this one's a relatively low point in my viewing sequence. One of hollywood's favorite mantras is, "Even bad men love their mothers." So that's where this starts, with the four brothers returning to Detroit to avenge their moms's untimely death.

Hey come to think of it, this was ridiculously similar to the plot of GTA: San Andreas. They might even have the same storyboard.

Both stories start with a dead mother, (what could be more dramatic than that) and pick up with the search for mom's killer. So the movie is just a bunch of hoodies + Wahlberg going around hustling various neighborhood characters. Man are there really people on earth that are this hardcore? The brothers are the toughest of the tough guys.

Mark Wahlberg's urban gangster walk in this movie is retarded. His arms are swinging around like crazy and he bobbs up and down like he's on a merry-go-round. No one in real life would ever have that kind of gait.
Rating: 30%

Lord of War (2005)

I was looking for a light hearted movie, and Nicholas Cage would surely provide it. Going in, I believed that Lord of War was going to be a brusque, shoot the bad guys movie with a shitty plot and a shittier display of acting . Instead, I got an incredibly deep tale of woe about the creed of weapons dealing. Nick Cage's sullen voice narrated the movie, supplying quick justifications behind his character's complex moral decisions.

He starts as a nobody. One day he rationalizes that restaurants will always exist because people will always need to eat. Therefore, weapons dealers will always exist because people will always need to fight each other. "Besides, the margins are better", says Cage. Shrewd reasoning if you ask me. Margins and Need. Ask anyone why they choose their profession and it will be one of those, either good margins or great need.

So Cage goes out into the world and makes his name by selling weapons to one side of a conflict, then the other. Every war in recent history becomes a lucrative business opportunity. His big break came with the dissolution of the USSR, giving him ample armament to flood the market with Soviet military surplus.

So basically, we get a profound explanation for the causes of all modern armed conflict. This movie says that all those blood diamonds and child soldiers are simply byproducts of the war economy surplus. We were in fact responsible for fueling the violence with weapons that we manufactured, packed up, and sold.

Great acting by Nicholas Cage again. Why have his more recent movie sucked so much?
Rating:90%

Lucky # Slevin (2006)

Welcome to the world of crisp, cool crime stories where innocent little Josh Hartnett has to deal with a bunch of brunt gangsters that want money from him. You have to listen to all of them talk their heads off, even if they're not directly related to the plot. You will have to watch the portrayal of a Jewish mafia, which is borderline anti-semitic. You will watch Morgan Freeman be a gangster too, as head of a mob with his matter-of-factly facial expressions. Less words and more staring at your constipated face, is the name of the game.
The girl next door is Lucy Liu, who (is tiny in stature and) spends the movie fawning over Josh Hartnett. She just can't get enough of this guy. Is she really that small? It didn't seem that way in Charlie's Angels.
Anyway in the end, the good guy kills the bad guy, so happily ever after right? Naw, pretty much every character in this movie was a fucker. The bad guy loses, the good guy wins, and I lose for watching this faggoty movie.

Rating: 40%

Babel (2006)

When I first discovered Apple Trailers, I watched a segment for this and was intrigued. I wondered how this one movie could weave together some tribals in Afghanistan, a blond couple on vacation, Mexico, and some Japanese people. Well they did it. They're lives are all related in some weird way, and the tribals are in Morroco, not in the Afghans. Could Babel be about globalization? Language barriers? The story has more to do with Babelfish than the Tower of Babel. In fact, language barriers hardly come into play in the story, and most of the plot is moved along by the unintended aspects of human individual ambition. Cool movie, but I don't see a moral. Oh, and Brad Pitts in it. He's cool.

Rating: 60%

Wall Street (1989)

So I guess this is what the financial market was like in the 80's. Man, look at those shitty computers, and are those ledgers? How did they manage to do all this market trading stuff on a green screen? The dress code looks the same. The snide, slightly restrained douchebaggery is also the same. But my god, look at all that paper! Nobody uses paper anymore, in fact, I think all that stock market data is computer generated. So now I'm wondering why brokers are so busy these days, when the computers are doing all the work for them. Can you imagine calling your broker to ask for a price check? HAHAHA nobody would ever do that.
Oh, I almost forgot. This is basically Boiler Room but with Micheal Douglas instead of Ben Affleck. The similarity is remarkable but this is the original.

Style is too old.
Rating: 40%

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Wow this is a really awesome western. I usually don't go for these types of movies, simply because I find the dusty dry scenery to be unappealing, but when I saw Russell Crowe and Christian Bale on the cover, I knew this had substance. Every time someone dies, expect it to be good. Each death is profound. Every corpse has meaning, and that's how it's supposed to be. People have to die for a reason. When I watch a western, I don't want to see a horde of retarded outlaws play shoot-em-up with a bunch of stupid sheriffs like some kind of outback holocaust. I want to see a bad guy fighting with an ordinary person that's incredibly determined. Show me accomplished and philosophical characters that share the same common sense but choose different sides. Top it off with good acting and you're done.

Amazing line: "Tommy was weak. TOMMY was stupid. Tommy. Is. Dead."
Rating: 100%

Paycheck (2003)

After so many years of hearing about this from other people and shrugging, I finally got this fucking movie and actually watched it. Meh. Modern action movie with high tech gear and a man/woman celebrity pair, period. That's all you're gonna get from this movie and you will remember nothing more profound than that. Ben Affleck is this secret agent that does backwards engineering for rival corporations and then gets his memory erased after the job is done. Following one of the routine mind wipes, weird things start happening that unravel an action packed mystery. Cool premise.

Where this movie falls below par is in the characterization of the bad guys, which were often excessively stupid or had motives that just didn't make sense. It annoys me to see characters doing unreasonably stupid shit. The story depends on the human quality of the antagonist, and when the bad guy is stupid, the story becomes stupid. The result: the plot fails. Ben Affleck swinging a wooden staff around also annoyed me. Why did they put that in there? Nobody wants to see Affleck doing kung fu. I've seen people on the street do much better.

Rating: 50%