Shabadoo-2

This was so bad, I want God to give me an extra two hours of life having had to sit through it.

First off, the acting was uniformly bad. There was barely a plot, unless "Shaggy dog story with a guy in a rain poncho and skeleton mask instead of a dog" counts.

The editing was was all over the place, and the slow-mo shots of the "gore" (red corn syrup flying through the air--doubtless flung using a spoon) got irritating after the tenth time, and infuriating after the hundredth time.

I like Michael Rooker. He's done some good work. This was not good. This was less than good. And by that, I mean that it sucked. Hard.

For god's sake, don't watch this movie.

This is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Excellent acting, storytelling, cinematography, and some of the best martial arts fights ever filmed.

The tone is very somber and humorless, but the beauty of the fights and settings brings unexpected lightness. And while the storytelling is a bit heavy-handed, it's appropriate. This is a piece about a cornerstone of Chinese history, told as a fantasy.

Jet Li is brilliant. His fight with Donnie Yen is awesome. But it's Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung who steal the show. Their chemistry is intensely believable and they give the film intimacy.

The story at first seems very shallow--a Kung Fu assassin plot. But it gets deeper and while it's not the most brilliant thing ever written, it serves as more than just a vehicle to move from one fight to the next.

Too bad the hype for this film is so huge. And it bothers me that every other critic feels compelled to compare it to "Crouching Tiger." This movie stands on its own as a true work of art that just happens to be entertaining.

As a big fan of both franchises, I felt let down. As a fan of Science Fiction movies, I felt let down. As a fan of action movies, I felt only slightly less let down.

I didn't expect this film to recapture the artistry of the original "Alien" or the intensity and humor of "Predator," but I did expect it to at least be a good movie. It wasn't.

A friend remarked that he hoped the DVD release would restore some of the cut violence and make this a better movie. While some blood and guts could really help to restore the horror element, nothing can make up for the horrible dialog and flat acting.

Was it just the cutting of the R-rated material that made the edit so bad? The movie was 87 minutes long but seemed more like 60. Characters who I feel like I'm supposed to care about are dismissed too soon and without any humor, irony, or anything to show that the writers and director have any real creative ability.

The fight scenes were a mixed bag. I admit it was a fanboy's dream to see the two species go at it, and the use of animatronics (as opposed to too much CG) gave the creatures a gritty, slimy edge that computers have yet to capture. I'm not a fan of quick-cut fight scenes and was happy that the camera would occasionally pull back a bit to let me see the monsters pounding the crap out of each other.

I tried to think of how I would have thought of this film if I had never seen an Alien or Predator movie. It was OK. A cut above straight-to-video or a Dolph Lundgren film, but that's about it. But if I were a neophite, I'd be asking so many questions about the creatures that the 87 minutes would be done before I got half of them answered.

A disappointment to a fan, who hopes for some small redemption in the DVD release.