I didn't pay for it, fortunately, because I have HBO. My stepdad had it on so I thought, let me watch this piece of Bruckheimer and see if it's really as bad as they say. And it is.
I learned something from this film. I kept thinking to myself, why don't I believe this movie? How can I suspend my disbelief so much for other films when this one has me rolling my eyes every ten seconds?
Is it the constant obvious product placement, like when the camera held for a couple of seconds on a close-up of a beer bottle so our dashing male lead could drink one swig and forget about it? That's annoying, but that's not it.Is it the fact that our heroes keep experiencing the best luck in the world, like landing in a batch of netting while they fall a zillion feet inside a giant neon letter off the side of a building and end up with like, one scratch over an eye? No. I've seen that before and completely bought it in various Terminator films.
Is it the fact that our heroes, who boast the education of a 15 year old, keep outsmarting our borderline retarded professional hunters? We're getting warmer.
Maybe it's the fact that the head professional hunter suddenly decides to be a good guy at the end. Maybe it's the fact that all the clones who've been taught from conception to fear the supposedly contaminated world outside wander happily into the sunlight when given the first opportunity. Maybe it's because every plot twist or character quirk was visible miles ahead of itself. Maybe.
But I think it's because the seams were showing. The action scenes were action scenes. The love scenes were love scenes. The exposition was exposition. Even the one-line comedy bits were chucked in like missing puzzle pieces. Nothing was more than one thing. When Steve Buscemi's character tells our cloney heroes what they are, he's sitting in a house drinking booze and casually throwing out those Steve Buscemi-like sarcastic faces. I was bored. I thought about how much cooler it would have been if Ewan MacGregor, who's supposed to be very smart and curious, figured out the truth through clues Steve Buscemi didn't want to give away, all while they were trying to escape from the big bad meanies. Then we could have had some action, some exposition and maybe a little character development all at the same time. Instead, we just had exposition.
From now on, I'm not letting a scene of my script go until I've found a way to make it accomplish at least two things at once.
One of the themes of this film was that people will do anything to survive. I know it's the theme because they kept telling me that. But nobody actually had to do anything questionable to survive. They did exactly what anybody would do. When someone points a gun at you, you fight. No good guy had to sacrifice any innocent victims. Wouldn't you think in a movie about clones fighting for survival, the occasional moral conundrum would come up? Maybe you'd have to allow some decent person to die so that you could live? Nope. Bad guys are bad, good guys are good, and Sean Bean can always be relied upon to play the stuck up British guy who wants to have power over everybody.
Thank goodness this film tanked at the box office. I'd fear for the souls of us all if it did well. It's bad enough that Con Air made money.
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