Indeed, given the truly heroic (and seemingly endless) liberties taken and amendments made, one pictures Alexander Dumas spinning around in his tomb rotisserie style (but faster). But the savagely modern, somewhat melodramatic changes can't compete with the grainy cinematography, which, along with its conservative British framing, makes this version of The Count of Monte Cristo feel like one of the most ambitious and exciting episodes of masterpiece theater ever created. Yes, there are now illegitimate children, once deadly guns which don't go off, consolidated characters; anachronism isn't reached - barely, at times - but, to be sure, this is obvious, shifty eyed tinkering. The film does, however, convey beautifully (with help from Caveziel's victimized Boy Scout eyes), that a hopeless, torturous prison sentence can be turned around (or, possibly, dismissed) if one is lucky enough to be tunneled into by Altemus Dumbledore. I mean Richard Harris. The cornerstones, as it were - Michael Wincott and Luis Guzman - each share a particularly rare thing (weighing company involved): clunker turns as, respectively, an abusive, one-dimensional prison warden and a foreign, too jolly fool cum servant; Neither actor seems quite right as their respectable character (compounding on which is the writer's decision to downplay their supposedly integral roles in Caveziel's prison term and subsequent vengeance). I've heard people say Pearce should have, in fact, played Caveziel's part. It's a bad idea. Though Pearce's downfall in the latter part of the film is upstaged by what looks like the single most shocking dental tragedy to take place in all of the Napoleanic Era, his plastered grimaces and truly pungent one-liners never grow tiring; we could easily watch his smug mugging go on until the revenge has been drawn out far longer than could ever be truly satisfying. The corker, among so many ridiculously unnecessary detractors, is thus: The Count of Monte Cristo is packed with oodles of revelatory, guilty pleasure Golly - No!'s and I Can't Believe It's Not the Way It Used to Be (Two Scenes Ago)'s - each served in decidedly accessible fflavors.

It's hacky - and kind of amateurish; and rarely as funny as it wants us to believe. Premise pumping like a life-force, the story of a boy who lays down the play for the requisite Lenten duration turns into a sort of sub American Pie string of eye-bulgingly forced sex jokes. Sossamon, zombie boy Hartnett's love interest, is the only one who appears to be investing herself in it; the rest of the cast recycled from way too many teen farces. When Hartnett's friends and co-workers set up an internet site advertising a bet that he'll give in to temptation, though, a devastatingly dumb plot twist (yeah, the one with the flower) turns the movie into a ripped sack - precious plausibility billowing out. The kind of movie where no one realizes that comedy has to be taken seriously or the movie's not so much funny as it is sad.

A great deal of Stein's un-PC edges are left properly raw (the film doesn't lose sight of the fact that, at heart, it's about a girl experimenting with her sexuality). The Matchmaker Matchmaker (Make Me a Match) stereotypes, which garishly outline the title character's family members, are a touch on the excessive side of satire, which firmly establishes, for me, how the film would work best. The Yentas rushing their daughters to wedlock didn't appeal to me, exactly, but it did get me thinking about the nature of Stein's decidedly overwrought premise. I mean, a girl gets sick of the disappointment of dating males and decides to take a crack at females only to realize she has really high standards - - - it's a stretch. This kookyy compatibility tale's intended target is left a mystery (Is it Sex and the City? Woody Allen films? Dating in general?). It's tendency, however, to veer toward Indie-land clichés remains perfectly visible. (It takes place in New York City, for Chrissakes!)

Bad idea to include excessive outtakes, by the way (it becomes obvious from the first shot of Ed Norton cracking a joke on camera that the movie was much more fun to make than to watch). The fractured story of dueling Kid's show hosts and the underworld heavies that control them (huh?) plays like one of those great premises that is absolutely inexecutable. Norton's character is the only one that seems invested with anything less than out-and-out scenery chewing; Williams plays a character who takes a really big fall career wise (who was, I'm sure, easy enough to play); Devito and Keener harness their usual personas (I still say, as good an actress as Keener is, she can't pull off pleasant); and Jon Stewart flat-out can't act (though he's the best part of the outtakes). The story is so unbelievably over-the-top, things happening left and right that seem almost laughable in any context that isn't out-and-out fantasy. Both the History of Smoochy Past/Present Ice Show and the Rainbow Randolph/Smoochy theme songs are way too clever to share screen time with the mechanical twists of the narrative or the randomness that depletes Death to Smoochy's momentum. In the end, the relative brilliance of those songs standing against the lackadaisical ramblings of the revenge yarn seem to denote quite clearly that the film isn't living up to the promise of it's premise.

Miyazaki's film is an imagination machine, so full of inimitable wonder, you almost miss how aimless and gruelingly episodical it is. Another young female protagonist strolls into an endlessly ambitious museum of animation. I sound cynical, but Miyazaki's movies tend to elicit more of my honor than my open enjoyment of them (read: they're too long). Spirited Away has plenty of jaw droppers: human Sen's proving herself to her spirit employers by expertly accommodating a stink spirit leaps to mind; Sen's dealings with tiny pieces of coal dust (reminiscent of the dust bunnies in Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro) and the eight legged man who commandeers them (and runs the spirit city); and even the scene that feels like it's own short film, when Sen, a witch's pet heads (don't ask) and her gigantic baby (who has been turned into what looks like a miniature Totoro, himself) set out to return a stolen stamp and rescue a boy who has been turned into a.....and it goes on like this. These brief descriptions of the characters - without so much as context - paint thhe picture. Everything that happens in the movie is out-and-out clever. That none of the mini movies really need each other to stand on their own, makes it less a movie than a collection of Miyazaki doodles.

Like a young Leopold and Loeb, Gosling and Pitt plan and execute the perfect murder. Trouble is, their consciences kick in so mechanically when detectives Bullock and Chaplin start grilling them, we cease to care which one of them performed the actual killing. (And am I the only one who wondered, is that really the point, anyway?). Stranglehold of tired notions never lets up, instead, we watch in horror as the obsessive (and forced into sabbatical) cop with the mysterious past who has gut instinct instead of problem solving skills (and rattles off secret facts of the murder case as if she's read the script herself) dissolves the interesting part of the film: namely, the killers' A-Z knowledge of crime scene procedure. Pitt rattles off technical jargon with the same cold indifference he shows to the murder itself throughout the first half of the movie. As soon as Gosling starts his Max Cady-ish flirtation with Bullock - and the film's energy shifts questions from how they did it to which one of them did it - Murder By Numbers becomes too much a meditation on these genre typical characters than on beating the flatfoots at their own games. At the very least, it nicely mutes the briefly introduced credo of being set free through the ability to kill. Whether subduing  this theme was a by-product of Lieberman's violence mis-marketing protest or a realization of a too serious idea being introduced amidst all the relative fluff of Numbers flare-less crime drama execution - the world may never know.

How did this ever become a cliché?

An unshaven, sloppily dressed, unapproachably dense mathematician ponders, finger tapping, eyes darting, a drop of sweat slowly weaving down the countenance to pool in the chin  - and then - a close up of  letter sequences arranged as gibberish. Then, to befuddled faces, the unshaven guy looks up, adrenalized: "Chaps! Oy've Ker-acked'it!"

Never about less than five things at once, it's one of those fashionable British War Dramas that boasts repeatedly to realize the turning point in the war, but proceeds instead to make this a minute detail, easily overshadowed by half realized characterizations (Dougray Scott is particularly sluggish as a tortured romantic mathematician), historical recreations that do little else but call attention to themselves and an absolutely indolent pace. Can't figure out if it's a companion piece to the regrettable U-571 or proposed competition for A Beautiful Mind. Either way, it's about as exciting as the scarce bit of code breaking we see. (Which is to say, not all that exciting at all, people).
 

My friend Randy recently told me that he hates Meets comparisons (You know, it's Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman, stuff like that). The Cat's Meow is Gosford Park meets RKO 281. I make the point only as the film seems bogged down with the same trouble of the latter of those two films: the historical re-creation and portrayal of famous faces (William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin) doesn't seem immediate or contextualized, and, therefore, the characters could have been called by any names - and no one would have noticed. It's a lighter version of the former film, not because it's a murder mystery - it's not - but because of it's themes of manipulation in close quarters (one better, the movie industry trying to infringe on other reputable businesses, IN close quarters). But, in a lot of ways, The Cat's Meow is itself, an original - of late, anyhow - piece of ensemble filmmaking: the cast is uniformly terrific, thanks in part, we assume, of Bogdanovich's mature direction (is there any other word for it, his style is so slight, it's barely there, let alone how to describe it). Hermann is a particular standout as Hearst, creating a character so clearly and effortlessly, he almost defies the anonymity of the piece's roaring twenties' celebrities. It's never more than a diversion, anyhow, all of it's swooning romance and Charleston dancing contains about  the same amount of significance and depth as, I'm sure, the stage play upon which it's based.

It's two films, really; the first is a raw gander towards the grind of recording an album, and, the second is a circular damning of the music industry's artless practices. Watching Wilco perform is, without a doubt, as exciting as watching The Band or Talking Heads perform (in their respective music documentaries) - and this is a rare feat. Also uncommon is how effectively it acts as lubrication of forgiveness for what turns into a good twenty minute segment where the camera seems to rotate between the same four faces making almost identical comments: "Here we have This Record and This Record is to become THE RECORD and then.....Something Happened: the record label dropped us. Pardon us while we dilly-dally to the bottom of this". The story is bittersweet (despite that bit), with two members of Wilco departing, an absolutely magnificent collection of songs - and the feeling that it may all have been for nothing. Sam Jones' 16 mm photography is gorgeous from start to finish (he is a famed photographer). The most successful moments, apart from it's obvious hook (the music), are the casual character sketches of front man Jeff Tweedy and multi- instrumentalist (and dead ringer for Philip Seymour Hoffman) Jay Bennett.

Okay, watching the title character fall instantly into the role everyone's favorite, funny friend made me enjoy the film a great deal, but, honestly, what's all this stuff here at the end, with the weeping and the rude interruption of cynicism and the sudden shift from a Holden Caulfield-esque classically revered every man to the lead in corn ball production of "The Summer that Changed My Life"? Culkin spits out Steers dialogue like a youthful Mamet wise guy, smirking about in the most adorable way, but his role is pivotal only because of a rare, absolutely flawless supporting cast. (See Almost Any Movie as an example of the ever constant stream of uneven casting that's commonplace nowadays). Phillipe is suitably arrogant, a role he's been building up lo' these last few years; Sarandon refreshing her Bette Davis routine; Pullman in a short but zinger bit part as a pressure cooked invalid (a younger Culkin, Rory, looks even more like Pullman than Kieran - and that they both look like him is a sharp attribute); Goldblum looks like he's been forced to watch his own commercials and can't stop acting successful; Danes taps Gwyneth Paltrow's patented superiority complex which always appears to be melting post-haste; Harris is eccentric rather than rational (in other words, he plays his good twin). The film is greased - it moves so competently and so easily through Culkin's anti transformation period (which makes it all the more idiotic for the film to suggest him to be so darn changed at the end). It does lapse, often times, into a string of clever observatory wit, spliced with predictably sympathetic minor tragedies. That it's cast visibly transcends its frank, just about bothersome familiarity as a coming-of-age tale - this is what sells Igby Goes Down to you. If you think it's that wretched cover of The Band's "The Weight" playing of the last couple of Igby's "powerful" gestures - I have news for you: the Igby from the beginning is the same Igby at close. That's part of what's cool about the movie.

That Steers tries to make his audience believe anything but is nothing short of mystifying.

So harmless you might puke; so mediocre you might wonder why people love it; so sick of wedding movies. It's kind of a bad sign when a writer uses Greek culture as a derogatory stereotype left on repeat to such an extent that even a "They'll be there no matter what" revelation feels disturbingly false. It's nothing more than a bunch of conflicts that are resolved as soon as the husband-to-be stares into the wife-to-be's eyes. (Which is usually less than a fiver after said conflict is introduced). Too many scenes where the predictably whiny score takes over. The title tells us the ending. If watching everything up to (and including) that point isn't stimulating - why not just watch another episode of A Wedding Story on TLC?

A half-assed collection of ironic jabs - some of them so searing you can almost feel the Wood-man poised to punish us for seeing their obvious relevance to his current situation. By overusing his second act blind spell, a smart gag beaten like a dead horse in the ground, he completely undermines what could've been a much smarter, much angrier self deprecating film-as-stunt. His characters have yet to live and breath as they once did (even his seventies slapstick flicks had more interesting characters with much more depth). The cast lists are starting to reflect his rapid slide downward. Treat Williams? George Hamilton? Tiffani Thiessen? C'mon. You don't have to be blind to figure out what's happening here.

Joins I am Sam in the category ear-marked for Social Issue movies which are too plot specific to achieve the rank of Message Movie, too reputable (read: there's reputable talent attached) to be MOW's and too full of characters and situations that don't connect to the social issue at hand (in this case, spousal abuse) because they inevitably become "entertainment". I mean, Enough is preposterous to the last (with foreshadowing I would recommend only because it must be seen to be believed) - but it is oh so cool. If only Apted put as much energy into his 007 entries - with whose intrigue of hide and seek and identity swapping Enough has in spades. There is so much to get a kick out of - I'm tempted to make a list (but, c'mon, I'm not going to make a list). Reminds me of the admiration laced with massive reservations that I had for Joy Ride. Enough takes itself so seriously - even though it acknowledges our need of a crane to suspend our disbelief (as in, How exactly does Billy Campbell manage to run a business and keep up to three lovers when he spends so damn much time controlling his wife? How does Campbell manage to walk up to a door, make an offer on a man's house (which was not for sale) and then subtly threaten the man by suggesting that he, Campbell (and his wife J. Lo), will continue to pester the man about the house until the man has sold it to them?) J.Lo has almost no chemistry with her child - her maternal instinct is nil - but manages, just the same, to create a rather sympathetic case for herself to learn the ancient art of Health Club Kung-Fu (complete with wisdom-spewing Billy Blanks-ish mentor). It's easily the best guilty pleasure I've seen this year. So much so that, I'll admit, I spent some of the running time pausing the film to yell sarcastically peppered updates to the wife as she productively chipped away at her housework in the other room.

Feels like a notebook being emptied. The self parodying remark Farina makes to his concurring partner ("I haven't seen that done before") is oh so fitting. Nearly everything in the film feels staged to live up to that very promise. It's almost a perfect encapsulation. The movie works because it produces, without mincing words, laughs. Out loud. Tons of em'. Typically palm tree and sun soaked street Miami locations are far too reminiscent of the Elmore Leanord world of wise-cracking gangster-lite. Dave Barry - upon whose book the film is based - actually makes Leanord's world seem dark by comparison and the movie has an irritating air of weightlessness that almost handicaps it to death. It doesn't help that Big Trouble is populated by what appear to be Leanord-character parodies (whom it actively refuses to flesh out) . It's a nice idea, but it's too vague and, on top of that, it's just too easy: a bunch of crazy situations created for a bunch of flamboyant character quirks and - watch the sparks fly! (Read: I've been tempted to write the very same sort of crap).  Is it just a cruel coincidence that Dennis Farina spends so much time ragging on Miami? It's as if his character was added based upon the assumption that Snatch was successful primarily due to Farina's vocal disdain for the England in that film. Or he's parodying his brutal lunkhead in Get Shorty, who also wastes a good chunk of breath bitching about Miami. More theories.

Cuts through the anticlimactic, epiphany happy treadle of the book, presenting the film as if the second in a series of American funded, American minded, American style British films (the first would, of course, be last year's Bridget Jones' Diary). These films - though this one is quite funny and offten, quite skillfully and effortlessly reverent - may be set to replace the Britcoms. ('Bout fuckin' time, right?) It is bar none Hugh Grant's best performance to date and he plays the hell out of another thankless, morally inept bloke who finds humanity (or pretends to for our benefit, anyhow). Collette and Weisz bounce him back and forth beautifully (the Collette/Grant confrontation "scene" in the restaurant is a shade of nightmarish hilarity one couldn't possibly foresee the Weitz Bros. - of American Pie fame - conceiving, not in their wildest dreams). By the end, the pat, almost contrived good guy arc beaming from Grant's character (the book ended with a sly smile) gives us the feeling we've been wronged. The character actually learns from a mistake (pretending to have a kid) and makes it again almost without meaning to (as if the accidental denotation "I have a kid" was a horribly timed coincidence) - and we're still subjected to lovey-duuvey "guess what I learned" moments. It's forgivable - as the ending is the same as the one in the book - but irritating just the same. If the film had completely re-engineered the ending, we'd be talking about much higher marks. As is, the ending rings the same revelation on the way out of the confession box that both High Fidelity and Hornby's latest novel, How To Be Good do. How can such a clever and scathing (and clever again) author be so interested in the happy ending fantasy? End of rant. See the movie. Dread the conclusion.

Probably wouldn't do me any good to harp on the rather obvious fact that Brotherhood of the Wolf doesn't have a focal point until about the ninety minute mark. The most astonishing reason that I was so kind to a movie so goofy is how professional it makes hipster filmmaking look. Motion is sped up, tacky digital effects are brazenly woven into complicated photography, Hong Kong brand fight sequences are beautifully conceived and executed, time lapses and dream sequences benefit (rather than suffer) from technology, and so on and so on. The movie itself is a scattershot reflection on several hunting expeditions for a wolf-like beast (which, it is repeatedly made clear, terrorizes the countryside without end) and to the revolutionary attitudes in Paris during the French Revolution, as told in flashback by an aristocrat who recounts, among other things, a great chunk of a narrative he never actually witnessed. But his retrospective blunders aren't really all that important since the film is merely expensive trash, released here in America as an art film merely because it happens to be French. Interesting to see straight-to-video kingpin Dacascos playing the most interesting role here (and he's short on dialogue - which is a big plus). It's the perfect comment on how low-grade Brotherhood of the Wolf really is: a video shelf riding action hunk like big Mark Dacascos is a slave in heaven (America), but a star in hell (France). Of course, my hyperbole rich references to the American and French movie industries with ultimately finite terms such as "heaven" and "hell" creates the perfect comment on how pretentious I really am. (But not, I'll submit, pretentious enough to pretend I admire a film this cracked simply because it has words running just below the painstakingly framed ... frame).

It's cool; a juvenile way to sum up a film, granted - but a proper one. Film never gels beyyond its cool, though, always opting to loudly and flamboyantly suggest that it's not what it seems, rather than actually working towards such an end. Kilmer's character has a far-too-obvious defining trait that miraculously manages to transcend itself (changing his name and his lifestyle are meant to clumsily stand as a metaphor for constantly questioning his own identity - via voice over, no less). It's not uncommon to see a film about a down-and-out bloke with a Big Secret on his mind, never mind one who is constantly reassessing which life as pretense - and it's all far too complicated for the tone that director Walsh employs. That's really the blinking compliment here, though - the tone: The Salton Sea is rock n' roll style (read: they use a good number of unnecessary titles on the screen), random asides (a plot to steal Bob Hope's stool sample that goes horribly wrong) and mood altering cool (read: tons of montages set to druggy rhythms). Kilmer radiates badass fever (even though his character is a enigma wrapped in not very much at all), but his turn never really feels like a departure for the decidedly commercial actor. (For a glimpse at this, see his magnificent performance as an abusive, drunken, overweight stepfather in the magnificently god awful Joe the King). Supporting cast is like a mediocre mix tape: usual solids like Guzman, Unger and Goldberg are flat-out wasted in underwhelming roles while Saarsgard and Wong (who usually disappear into the landscape), actually seem to find a loophole into a saving grace. Saarsgard plays Kilmer's "tweaker" best friend (whose shtick is, he's unabashedly dim), and Wong plays an Asian federal agent posing as a Mexican posing as a cowboy who we actually believe (here's the magic) would be interested in a quarter million dollar's worth of speed. Most of the ink spilled on The Salton Sea headlines D'Onfrio's frequently hilarious, but rarely menacing turn as Pooh Bear, a drug dealer/user whose meth weary nose has been replaced by what looks to be one of those plastic eyeglass, mustache and schnoz items (minus the specs and the soup strainer). Pooh Bear turns out to be too small time for his own good and the rather convoluted revenge plot concerning Kilmer's dead wife - sub headed by an undercooked subplot involving a Columbian drug dealer we never actually see - sadly, can't compete with the nose less Texan twang of D'Onfrio narrating his own re-enactment of the JFK assassination with pigeons and BB guns. Arcane goofiness like that (peppered with random drug facts) manage to suffice in what amounts to a shoelace narrative: pulling one string pretty much unravels the whole thing.

Like a gift from above - a historical document that feels like it's taking place in the eighteenth century; Appropriately stylized (and the digital photography isn't detracting, not one bit) like Rohmer's Perceval, only amazing rather than uneven. More to come...

So corporate infused, so ready-to-break-$100-million that it's barely reminiscent - save Lillard's Shaggy - of the seventies' TV program. I'd waste time bitching about characterizations if I thought it were the real issue here, but alas, it's not. The most challenging thing about Scooby Doo is how absolutely braindead the film makes unraveling a mystery feel. Granted, the cartoon series on which it is allegedly based was often half-baked to hell (which was the fun of it). This film, however, couldn't draw the parallel between its own thoroughly uninteresting plotline and the camp genius of Hanna Barbera if it were given a million scooby snacks as incentive. Gosnell, directly in opposition of the show's miraculoulsy non-threatening atmosphere, casts the tonal pall of modern sarcasm over the "adventure" (doesn't help that the screenwriters start the film off with the gang in the throes of jealousy over Fred's growing popularity before going their own separate ways). The blunt, blockheaded personalities bestowed on the characters certainly evince why we should stop making these cartoon cross-overs: Prinze, Jr. is arrogant, self-centered Fred (not the fun-loving, all-in-jest wisecracker of the series); Gellar is vocally dog-tired of being the damsel in distress (a talent that isn't openly discussed on the series - but then - TV Daphne got the short end of the character stick, too); Velma is now permanently deadpan (unlike before, when she was timely, pedantic and adorably clumbsy). Shaggy and Scooby remain the same stick-figure creatures, suggesting another great point: perhaps the movie should've been about them. I'm a little bitter about the whole thing: how hard would using one's imagination be, as opposed to grafting old cartoons into new contexts? Either way, by the time it's relatively short running time comes to a close, I had been actively anticipating freedom from its flat little world for at least thirty minutes (if not more). (Spoiler alert - stop reading!) The conclusion holds its own characterization betrayal: would Scrappy be diabolical enough to create a robot to hide himself in, disciplined enough to not reveal his own self-centered ass to everyone before the time is right, and clever enough to hatch the teenage zombie scheme whose particulars are left largely unanswered? I'm not the one to ask - I couldn't get past two minutes of the little pain in the ass on the television show - but I'd suspect he's a whole new character, too.

Like a mixed bag of problems, the biggest being that Affleck still can't carry a movie and be believable as intelligent, the least being how much it feels like television - right down to the camerawork and especially the often ham fisted dialogue. A textbook example of a bad political thriller. Films that include everything but the kitchen sink in their dissection of America's enemies seem kinda redundant (especially the neo-nazis, who have so little to do with the film, I actually tinkered with the idea of finding Cliffs Notes to Clancy's novel in order to satisfy my curiosity). Remarking on the nuclear blast that decimates Baltimore, my younger brother praised the special effects (which, to the film's credit, aren't shoddy). What annoys me, though, is how that sequence seems to lose any gravitas it may have formerly possessed before losing perspective to the 9/11 attacks. Yes, the whole shebang was coincidental, but, unfortunately, having seen a version of the real thing repeatedly aired on television last fall - the plot point feels tirelessly moot, it's execution honestly unbelievable. Watching these heavy-dangling world events play out amidst one-liners and
- let's call them horribly forced action sequences - never hits home a sense of harmoniouss context to marry together the quips or the docudrama. In fact, it reminded me of just how well the three previous Jack Ryan films had melded serious, realistic political intrigue with popcorn entertainment. I'm thinking it was partially in the casting (Ford as Ryan, Connery and Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October), but probably a good bit of gratitude is due to directors John McTiernan and Phillip Noyce. Director Phil Alden Robinson populates The Sum of All Fears with pretty boy Affleck and a handful of character and television staples. It feels like it were programmed with "to be continued" and commerical elipses. No wonder it movie feels herky-jerky.

[Also like to call attention to the fact that this is the Third D+ to D- rated film involving Freeman in about a year (Along Came a Spider and High Crimes being the other two). Hopefully playing Nelson Mandela (in an upcoming bio-pic) will break that streak.]

Shifting between four or five time periods at once - with an absolutely A-list cast - seems like a good idea until you realize that all of these people's lives and problems are rarely more than tirelessly ordinary. Framing it around four men driving their friend Jack's (Caine) ashes to be scattered from Malgate Pier gives the film most of its structure and appeal. (Course, I had to put the closed- captioning on a couple of times to brave through the thick accents). Everyone is marvelous, especially Caine - whose is the only character seen entirely in flashback and, ironically, is the only really interesting one.

Woo's stretching himself thinner and thinner (I'd defy viewers to tell me this were his film were his name not emblazoned on the credits); Cage brings back the dark and disturbed (he's actually the most noteworthy asset here - despite what you may have read); Didn't care for how the war footage kind of took over after awhile, setting the need to look deeper into the characters on the back-burner. (Though, to its credit, the movie pretty much nails the idea of fear in every soldier, not just those whose fear defines them almost completely - as in other war films); closest cousins are, sadly, Pearl Harbor and We Were Soldiers: starting with an overbearing score (by James Horner to boot), moving to the patriotism-or-bust attitude (always at the expense of the Japanese) and landing sideways on war clichés that get more and more noticeable as the film proceeds. I hate to sound usual, but, why not give some of these characters more to do? They pretty much stand around either defending or taunting the Navajo codebreakers (especially Emmerich, the obligatory uber-racist). Never really cooks up a narrative either; it's a rambling motion picture from start to finish; this meander, though, depending on placement, feels like both a cushion - and hinderance. Though I know it to be a film whose release date was dramatically pushed back (before, presumably, it was taken to the chop shop). It feels like a film in limbo: Was it focused before it got hacked-to-pieces (watch the trailers on the DVD - at least a third of what's in them doesn't make it into the final film) or was it on the verge of being a tight, concise flick before finally being purged to the screen (where it made much less than half its budget back)? It's almost a moot point.