suffers from the problems of modern action movies: too dark (visually) and too much quick cutting and cgi blood and explosions
there was that huge cast of stars but it seemed like Statham and Stallone were the only two guys who had a big part in it.
the plot was dumb. now I didn’t expect it to be good, but the problem I thought was that they tried to do too much. they should have just done a simple thing as an excuse to blow shit up. they tried to ask all these questions and this sideplot with the girl and I wasn’t sure what was going on with the CIA guy and whatnot.
and I was not impressed by the action scenes.
this movie was so built up in commercials and everything and I was really excited but I finally saw it and am not impressed.
I don’t know why I even look forward to anything anymore I am always dissapoint.
I judge all action movies by Commando. that was great. they had a simple plot. they had well-lit action scenes and you could actually see what was going on. real explosions
The dim lighting may have been the fault of the theater manager. Some managers believe that turning down the voltage on the projector bulb will extent its life, subjecting their patrons to a picture murkier than the director desired. Roger Ebert has campaigned against this for a long time.
The movie would have been infinitely better if they didn’t do those nanosecond quick cuts during action scenes. Between that and the darkness, I couldn’t tell what they heck was going on.
I didn’t find it dark, but I agree about the massive quick cutting.
What started these close-up, quick cut, action scenes? I remember in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon(10 years ago now), you could see what was happening. Same with the Matrix.
They discovered, when they made all the movies with Kung Fu (Lethal Weapon 4, Matrix, etc.) that it was a pain to train actors to look like Jacky Chan. Better to get a stunt double and cut fast enough that it’s impossible to tell that it’s a double. Unfortunately, that also means that it’s impossible to tell anything.
I too saw it on DVD, and also thought it was pretty dark. In a lot of fight scenes it was pretty hard to figure out just what was going on, and even who was fighting who.
And you’re right that the plot was way more complicated than it should have been, especially for this type of movie, where the main attraction isn’t supposed to be the brilliant writing.