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- First reviewJuly 20, 2009
- Last reviewJuly 20, 2009
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OperatorMan's Reviews
Customer Rating
2
Great potential lost thanks to unnecessary fluff.
on July 20, 2009
Posted by: OperatorMan
from Boulder, CO
This project was rejected by 4 director's before Snider came onboard. This movie was bound to disappoint but surprisingly many of the choices made in the film could have been avoided.
First off, contrary to previous reviewer below remarks, this movie DOES go overboard with extended material that was not explicitly detailed in the novel as it is here. The most talked about (and true) examples being the ultra violent fight scene during a jail break, an alley scene and the murder and final confrontation. Nowhere in the novel, which has been quoted as a storyboard for the film, were there ever people being tossed 20 ft away through tile, granite and pillars only to get up and fight back. The very first murder scene takes you through 5 minutes of this over the top Power Ranger choreography while the novel leaves the worst to the imagination and shows a few exchanges before having the victim tossed out the window. I guess the quick exchange wasn't Hollywood enough for Snider and co. Ditto the ridiculous final confrontation that embarassingly has one of the best characters being thrown into a giant marble pillar in a Matrix fashion only to get up and fix his coat and scarf. Again, not in the novel and does nothing to flesh out and add to the story. One couple walked out of the theatre upon a moment where one character deals a fatal blow to a child kidnapper that was pretentious and overtop in it's execution ( When will tHollywood learn what Alan Moore, original author, knew: that less is more.) No need to add fluff.
Ditto an intimat scene which was tastefully done in no more than 4 panels in the novel (despite the adult themes and motivation behind the acts) but extended into...I don't know...a 6-7showtime experience with a horrible song choice playing in the background and an unnecessary use of pyro. Though the moment has themes of fetish for the characters involved, I fail to see why it had to be so for the audience members. I wonder if they conducted a survey to determine that it would take that long in film time for us to 'get' that they were having intercourse.
With that out of the way, the story is very complex, entertaining and introduces you to characters you love and want to learn more about. You care about the mystery and the plight of these characters though the movie has some difficulty transitioning between present and flashback sequences. The opening credits did a great job of condensing numerous flashback scenes (irony for you Snider, why not shorten the matrix fights and intercourse to add more flashback/story).
Overall, this could have been a phenominal hit and did poorly in theatres because of some poor choices made by Snider and co. When you have a time constraint for a story as epic as this, the choices you make are instrumental in it's success and the reality is this movie suffers not because of what couldn''t make the final cut but what was added that did nothing to further the story, characters, or experience. This movie needed to be successful but hopefully Hollywood learns a lesson as to why it wasn't so we wont have a repeat down the road.
What's great about it: Visually beautiful to look at, soundtrack, faithful sections of source material
What's not so great: Fight scenes/intercourse scene distract from story, miscast, plot can be confusing new audience
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
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