This is a nice little film. It's a tightly written action thriller, with an unusual setting for this kind of movie, and a likable protagonist, half Sherlock Holmes, half Indiana Jones. I particularly enjoyed the pacing, in which no scene is wasted, nor drawn out too long, and...
Oh who am I kidding.
This *should* have been a nice little film. In a pleasant alternate universe, it is. But what we have instead is a likable protagonist, great setting, and an engaging plot which unfortunately has been bloated up to two-and-a-half-hours by Director Christophe Gans' unfortunate love-affair with his slow-motion camera lens. The turgid pacing, in which scene after scene just drags on and on and on, is enough to unfortunately rob this movie of some of its enjoyment factor.
Example: in one scene, our hero enters a high-class brothel. Lots of ladies are around wearing not much other than rouge and face powder. It should have taken about five to ten seconds to establish this fact, before our hero wanders deeper into the brothel to establish an important contact with another character. Instead, we get two and a half minutes of slow motion tracking shots of our hero, happily wandering through bolts of hanging silk, encountering new lovelies behind every tilted fan. About a minute in, I started feeling a little dirty for watching what was looking more and more like porn. After two minutes, I was simply bored.
The problem can be summed up in Gans' comments on the DVD extras. He shows the un-cut version of the opening fight scene, which lasts almost four times longer. Then he goes on and on, gushingly, about how WONDERFUL the editor was, how BEAUTIFUL the fight choreography was, how MANY, MANY DAYS of footage were shot and how if (oh rapture!) he'd had the chance, he would have included all of it in the final film.
Did you catch that? Days of uncut footage of a single fight scene, half of which is already in slo-mo. And Gans wants to force ALL of it on his viewers.
Take a clue, Gans. You've got a nice eye for visuals. You've got a good head for characterization (though you work too much in gesture, rather than dialog). You've even got a heart for atmosphere.
But fire your editor. He stinks.
Oh who am I kidding.
This *should* have been a nice little film. In a pleasant alternate universe, it is. But what we have instead is a likable protagonist, great setting, and an engaging plot which unfortunately has been bloated up to two-and-a-half-hours by Director Christophe Gans' unfortunate love-affair with his slow-motion camera lens. The turgid pacing, in which scene after scene just drags on and on and on, is enough to unfortunately rob this movie of some of its enjoyment factor.
Example: in one scene, our hero enters a high-class brothel. Lots of ladies are around wearing not much other than rouge and face powder. It should have taken about five to ten seconds to establish this fact, before our hero wanders deeper into the brothel to establish an important contact with another character. Instead, we get two and a half minutes of slow motion tracking shots of our hero, happily wandering through bolts of hanging silk, encountering new lovelies behind every tilted fan. About a minute in, I started feeling a little dirty for watching what was looking more and more like porn. After two minutes, I was simply bored.
The problem can be summed up in Gans' comments on the DVD extras. He shows the un-cut version of the opening fight scene, which lasts almost four times longer. Then he goes on and on, gushingly, about how WONDERFUL the editor was, how BEAUTIFUL the fight choreography was, how MANY, MANY DAYS of footage were shot and how if (oh rapture!) he'd had the chance, he would have included all of it in the final film.
Did you catch that? Days of uncut footage of a single fight scene, half of which is already in slo-mo. And Gans wants to force ALL of it on his viewers.
Take a clue, Gans. You've got a nice eye for visuals. You've got a good head for characterization (though you work too much in gesture, rather than dialog). You've even got a heart for atmosphere.
But fire your editor. He stinks.