Reviews

Rare film with universally excellent performances that I absolutely loathed. It's an interminable slog. It's just super-bombastically, pompously scored. It's as self-important a work as I've ever seen. It's not miserable-good, like Breaking the Waves or something, it's just miserable-awful. I regard it with fear & loathing.

Ranging from boring to excruciating, this film combines an hour of stock footage, a bizarre & often unpleasant soundtrack, grating narration, overacting by the only actor, and an uncompelling and often incomprehensible story to create a near utter waste of an hour and a quarter.

Brad Dourif is unlikeable in the only significant role, and his enunciation during the narration is often strange and unpleasant. Sadly, this narration is the only respite the viewer receives from otherwise interminable scenes of stock footage of astronauts and scuba divers floating about. I suppose these sequences are meant to be profound; I found them exceptionally tedious. They are not helped by the accompanying music. I also failed to suspend my disbelief when, presented with footage of Arctic divers, I was told that this was astronauts exploring a planet with a "sky made of ice" above a liquid hydrogen environment.

Points are for a mildly intriguing initial ten minutes and a somewhat interesting scientific discussion of wormhole travel.

3/10

PLOT: A squad of Korean soldiers is deployed on a search & rescue mission after a radio transmission is received from a missing team, killed by unknown forces.

REVIEW: R-Point does well in establishing an ominous atmosphere at the beginning of the film. The initial reconnaissance by the team unfolds with foreboding and tension, and the viewer is both eager and frightened to see what they will discover. Unfortunately, this tension quickly morphs into boredom. Little happens for much of the film, and the mood set by the introduction is lost. It doesn't help that the characters are unengaging and for the most part interchangeable. The performances quickly become annoying: everyone seems to be constantly hysterical, with characters grabbing each others' lapels and shaking them, or dropping to their knees and sobbing, every other minute. Most frustrating is that for all the buildup, the tale turns out to be a pretty generic ghost story, and not a very exciting or scary one. R-Point starts with an intriguing premise, but wholly fails to deliver.

I was a huge fan of both the first two films, and I didn't think it would take much to keep me happy with Revolutions. Just mix up some cool fight scenes with a little Philosophy 101 and I'll enjoy it. However, I was disappointed with Revolutions on all fronts. The action scenes for the most part fail to excite. The dialogue, from Morpheus's posturing to Neo's monotone deliveries, is stale. We generally get the sense that we've seen all this before. Making things worse, the movie feels rushed and haphazard. Scenes that seem like they should be better explained and more fleshed out are too short, while others that you can't wait to end go on forever. The conclusion is not only preposterous, but marred by an oversentimental, maudlin ending. I suppose you've gotta see it yourself regardless, but don't wait in line for tickets on this one.