Verdict:
Movies are hard. They require a lot of work from everyone. One element goes wrong, and the work of many people could be negated. This is why I don’t usually geIt angry when I see bad movies. Somebody tries to the best of their abilities with the budget they have and brings a project to a completion. That’s respectable. But this lazy Matrix wannabe with bad CGI, the incredibly childish “gun katta” fighting, and a ridiculous premise makes me angry and sad that Sean Bean and Christian Bale took their time to star in this, when they could’ve been making better movies. These kinds of cash-grabs do make me angry.
But at least such movies usually get panned by the public and we never hear anything about them ever again. The fact that this thing received positive reviews from the public made me think that either I saw a different film than everybody else or this world needs to be set on fire, along with the modern film industry, if this kind of garbage is going to be an acceptable standard for entertainment from now on.
Let us start with the plot: in the future feelings are illegal. ………………….. Turn this s**t off right now. You can just turn it off right there. What else do you need to know? How can anyone in their right mind still proceed to watch something when the main idea is so insultingly stupid? How can you believe a single thing shown on the screen with that as the back story? Here is a better premise I just came up with: in the future people only have one leg and must touch a pickle every 24 hours with their left index finger so that Hollywood executives can keep getting paid for artistically bankrupt content. Who keeps coming up with this stuff? Does someone get paid for it? Can I join in on the scam?
If you manage to get past this, then what you get is a cheap looking Matrix rip-off, mostly a stylistic rip-off but the story is not that different either if you think about it. The protagonists are wearing jackets they fished out of the bin outside of the Matrix Reloaded studio and are carrying Desert Eagles as their weapons of choice – you know, those giant pistols you see in Pamela Anderson’s productions and other 90’s direct-to-video action movies showing up on your TV at 1AM in the morning.
I bet the actors were happy with that stupid premise though, because it means they can all be emotionless, you know, because that is why they get paid large amounts of money, to look like a wooden plank with guns attached.
There is not much more to be told about the plot or the characters because…well, honestly, because I can hardly remember anything and I fear that if I try to remember then I will just bring up more painfully dumb plot points that I so successfully repressed.
Visually, the movie is style over substance and simplistic style at that. The sets look cheap, minimalistic and dark. At other times, we are treated to the computer effects your 10-year-old son made on his PC. At first, the characters wear black, but then this one guy has a change of heart and starts wearing all white. Somebody hold me, so I don’t fall. I need my heart pills after witnessing such complicated breathtaking symbolism.
But wait, the most priceless is the action itself. The characters are fighting with guns…no, no, no, I don’t mean “fighting” as in “wage war”, I mean they are physically dancing around in hand-to-hand combat while shooting their pistols, making 180 degree turns like they are doing ballet. And once they are done with that, they take out their katana swords, because that is cool to the 8-year-old who wrote the script. This film is a pinnacle of bad action movies from 2000s. It is like an 80s action flick but with none of the charm to compensate for the poor quality. I dislike this movie, but I mostly loathe the people who watched it and considered it a fine picture. Normally, I don’t hate on others for liking something I don’t like, because I recognize that some things are just not for me. If I get to watch war movies, it is only fair that someone else gets to watch drawn out melodrama that would make my teeth ache. But every now and then, I am reminded that somewhere out there is a dude who likes the concept of pistol fighting and katanas in a poorly rendered futuristic setting and this dude is not 8 years old anymore and belongs to the same human race as me, and that feels insulting.