Reviews

I just came back home from seeing this movie and I wanted to share my thoughts right away because this movie was disappointing. While the concept is interesting, the execution was very poor.

I will start my review with the good points. The first good point about this movie is the suspense. I must admit that I got hooked right away by the story. You see the president of the United States being shot but nothing is what it seems. The rest of the movie gives you the answers bits by bits. The second good point about this movie is the acting. Almost every character in the movie is believable and the performances are quite solid. Two thumbs up for Dennis Quaid in his role of veteran secret service agent Barnes and to Forest Whitaker who impresses me with every single performance he gives. Not only does he plays convincingly, he impersonates every character he plays (Last King of Scotland anyone?). However, Taghmaoui and Zurer are the weakest link in the bunch. That's it for the good points. As for the weaknesses of this movie, they are many.

I will start with the factual errors that plagued the whole movie from start to finish. The movie tells us events that happened during an international counter-terrorism summit. However, the host country is not represented by the Spanish prime minister or any other high ranking Spanish politician. The country is represented by the mayor of Salamanca who offers his city to the world. OUCH!!! Actually an International summit is organized on a state level and only the President (Or prime minister or Chancellor etc) of the host country is responsible of the city and the facilities that will be used for the event, not the mayor. This is an international summit for God's sake not a municipal trivial event. Secondly, in such summits, the general public is not allowed in the premises of the event as depicted in the movie. That is no way to have such a large crowd present during an announcement of such importance. The only people who could have been present would have been high ranking officials, head of states and important leaders, not average Joes. Furthermore, the protesters wouldn't have been allowed to be that close to the premises of the event. There's always a security perimeter that the general public can never cross and it's usually quite large.The second main weakness of the movie is how its subject matter is treated. I assume that the main subject of the movie was terrorism. However, the story doesn't give us any objective treatment, actually it's biased. Terrorism is again pinned on Arabs, as the summit unites Arab states and the West. There is no explanation as what western countries were present, it just states the West. There are no subtleties. There is no mention of what leads to terrorism or the way to confront this dangerous phenomenon. Therefore, terrorists in this movie are depicted as your usual stereotypical bad guy. There's not even a remote attempt to explain their background or the reasons that push them to do what they do or to believe in what they believe. They are just terrorists who want to hurt civilized countries. Later in the movie you'll learn that the attempt on the presidential life was a vendetta by the terrorists because they failed to smuggle a dirty bomb out of Morocco. Wow! How credible is that! Suffice to say that it's more likely for a dirty bomb to be smuggled out of Pakistan or Central Asia not out of Morocco. The third main weakness of the movie is its character development. It's actually non existent in this movie except for Thomas Barnes, Howard Lewis and Javier. There is no development for the other characters in the movie. Who are they really? What motivates them to do what they do? The terrorist bare Spanish names but are they truly Spanish? What led to the betrayal of Kent Taylor (Mathew Fox's character)? Was it ideological? Does he hold a grudge against his government? We don't know and the movie makes no effort to give us a clue. The last weakness that I will list here is the narrative style used to tell the story. We were supposed to see the story from the perspective of eight different people. However, this choice is ambiguous and not well executed. For the first two thirds of the movie you can really see the story from different perspectives. While this may be interesting at first, the constant rewinding sequences become boring and redundant by the third time. Many people left the auditorium after the third time and I couldn't help but close my eyes to avoid watching the rewinding sequences again. When the movie reached the final third, it was apparent to me that the director didn't know what he was doing anymore. The perspective story telling is totally abandoned and we are actually led to see the perspective of three different characters at the same time. This choice makes the first 60 minutes of the movie totally irrelevant. Why did the director choose to start with a specific narrative style and then abandon it for the final 30 minutes? Why didn't he stick with a conventional story telling style from the start? Did he want to make a Rashomon style movie? Was he trying to use a Pulp Fiction type of storytelling? If that was his intention, then he totally failed to accomplish his goals.

All in all, I give this movie a 4 stars out of 10. It remains a suspenseful and thrilling movie but its flaws outweigh its strong points. My advice: Watch it once, forget it and don't expect to see or learn anything new from it.

I watched The Golden Compass during an advanced preview of the movie. Let me tell you that this movie is plain terrible. The story: It doesn't make sens at all and there's no relation whatsoever with the title. The compass was supposed to tell the truth, but there was no single fragment of what truth...After a somewhat enjoyable first ten minutes, the story becomes like a bad swiss cheese: The plot holes keep accumulating and the story goes nowhere. That's due to the twenty, or so, subplots that stretch the story left and right leaving you confused. The film start with the compass, then there's a story about some witches, then you're taken to a bear tribe and finally all ends up in a factory-like place where they keep some children... And the bad guys keep popping everywhere all the way. Can somebody please tell me how all of that is related to the Golden Compass and the truth it was supposed to tell? The character development: Non existent. That's also due to the fact that there are more subplots than you can count. Craig has a mere 15 minutes of screen presence. Kidman about 30 minutes or so. Green about 10 minutes. The only ones that seem to enjoy more screen time are the Daemons, and it's all about showing off some cool CGI. As for the protagonist Lyra, I couldn't help but disliking her. She was supposed to be an innocent child who couldn't read the Compass, but all of a sudden, she could use it better than a pro...I won't talk about the ending because it's so amateurish that even the kids in the auditorium were laughing. The directing: You better not ask about it because there is none. The actors are left alone mumbling some lines they were told to say. All in all I give this movie a solid 3 out of 10. The story isn't interesting, the directing was horrible, and the character development is non existing.

I went to see this movie with high expectations from both Jet Li and Statham. I was already a huge Jet Li fan and I started to like Statham as an action star. Unfortunately I was disappointed from start to finish. 1- The title: When I saw the title "War" with Li and Statham opposite each other, I thought this movie to be a war between both. However, you see them opposite each other for about 2 or 3 minutes in the entire movie. Bravo! 2- The story: One of the silliest ever. Many clichés here and there. It will make you scream for murder once the real identity of Li is revealed. 3- The acting: Bad!!! Bad !!! Bad!!! Every actor in this movie sucked. Li and Statham's performance was somewhat above the other actors in this movie. Yet it was terrible in all ways. Aoki is to be considered for a Razzie award. Her face remain the same in every scene, and she had a tough time trying to speak and sound like a Japanese. By the way, Statham had to speak some Japanese lines and he sounded more convincing than her. 4- The action: Very boring. A couple of gun fights here and there. Some simple car chases. Mano-a-Mano fighting almost absent. You see Li fighting with swords, nothing more. As for the fighting between Li and Statham that you might expect, you'll see it for about a minute, and it's very boring. -Honorable mention: At one point in the movie, you'll see Li trying to get Triads and Yakuza members fight each other. So he dresses as a Yakuza and rides a motorbike through the Triads turf. The Triads members then spot him and chase him through the streets. The funny thing about it is that the Triads members yell "Those f&$%*? Japanese". Yet, they chase Li with their Honda and Yamaha bikes. Very clever!!! Bad directing, poor acting and too many plot holes make this movie a very bad one. Avoid it at all costs even if you are a Jet Li and a Jason Statham fan like me