Nordicnorn

This film... as I have been told over and over again "has received great reviews and a ton of awards" and "Everyone loved it". Well not me. I do think that the characters and the way each was portrayed by the excellent cast were compelling, although I see Tommy Lee Jones' character as the weak link. The potential greatness of this VERY dark movie was ruined by the unbelievably awful ending. I know life is not always wrapped up neatly, and I know that sometimes there is just no explanation... but I don't pay for real life and I do pay to be entertained. This did not entertain me and I only thought about it the next day in terms of how annoyed I was... not in terms of a good movie.

This movie had everything that a great movie needs. It had a cast of excellent acting talent, amazing and well done special effects and superbly realistic sets. Visually incredible. Sadly, it lacked a coherent story. This movie could not decide if it wanted to be a realistic space adventure, a spiritual journey, or a horror film. Try to imagine 2001 Space Odyssey meets Solaris, meets Nightmare on Elm Street (right down to the makeup). The editing and directing seem to blame for a frequent sensation that you missed something in the telling. One minute, there characters are in one place talking about one thing, the next is a scene where clearly something important has occurred but the viewer is not given critical information. There area so many tangents in this convoluted and disjointed tale that even I, a major Sci-Fi and end-of-of-the-world genre buff could not get engaged with this shallow movie. The director was so lazy that he simply (and transparently) incorporated familiar scenes from classic movies like Alien, 2001, and others into the mix. Simply bad story telling in what SHOULD have been and COULD have been an awesome movie given the budget and talent they had. In the end they defaulted to a "stooopid" formula horror plot, with a weak attempt at making some garbled and bizarre spiritual message. Bottom line - I would not recommend this unless you have time to kill while waiting in a laundromat.

Another review here mentioned the likelihood that this was a Julie Strain Ego stroke. I kind of have to agree. I find her a terrible,not-worth-the celluloid actress, although as a cartoon she is better than in real life. The storyline was really weak. So weak in fact one has to wonder if they wrote the entire script on a paper cocktail napkin while out drinking one night. True, the first Heavy Metal's storyline was a little disjointed, but it had multiple contributors and was the first of it's kind. And as the first it was good... and FUN. This one was not fun. There was no ironic/dark comedy moments. You knew where the story was going from moment one. Total formula I could not get involved with these characters either. The writing just never made me care. Lastly there was no sense of adventure. It was just very, repeat VERY, mediocre. Leave it on the shelf at the video store.