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* * * ½ In the midst of a gunfight, a hit-man (Chow-Yun Fat) with a code of honor accidentally blinds a club singer (Sally Yeh). Guilt-ridden, his life changes, and he does all he can to try and save her vision and her. Unfortunately, not only does he have a cop (Danny Lee) following him, but a whole horde of bad guys who have been paid to take him down. This movie absolutely rocks. I can't say it much better than that. Director John Woo seriously knows how to set up action sequences; these are stylish and spectacular. These scenes are absolute knockouts; they make normal action films look pathetic. On $2,000,000 bucks, Woo accomplished more than most directors do today on twenty times that. But that's not what makes this film great. It's the characters and story that make this a classic. It's not believable, of course, but the characters are complex individuals and the story is genuinely powerful. Yeah, it's melodramatic, but it works. And Woo moves it along at an unbelievably fast pace. Now, I saw it on an old, poorly subtitled, chopped-up videocassette, and I still loved it. Unfortunately, it was obvious an American studio had gotten hold of it and messed with it, because there were times when a shot or two was clearly cut out. But it was still a dang cool flick. A warning: it's a bloody, over-the-top, all-out testosterone flick with a body count higher than most war movies. As far as that goes, this is about as good as it gets: extraordinary action sequences, a powerful story, and good characters. But it is a guy's movie in every sense of the word. Of course, being an 18-year-old guy, I absolutely loved it, and so does pretty much every guy looking for a seriously awesome action flick, because this movie delivers. Just don't watch it if you don't want to see hoards of bad guys mowed down bloodily.

"10 years from now", Freddy has eradicated all the children and teenagers in the town of Springwood except one. That one kid is allowed to live just long enough to find Freddy's long-lost child. Then, everything builds up to the Freddy's death and the grand finale… … which really sucks.

The story and direction come from Rachel Talaly, who seems to have a very cartoonish imagination. In some films, that would work wonderfully. The atmosphere here is something like Looney Toones as made by David Cronenburg. In theory, that'd be pretty cool in a comic-book movie.

And, for a while, it actually works it. It's totally unhinged and seriously demented. To be honest, I kind of liked the wild insanity at times. The odd sense of humor makes it sort of fun. It also makes it feel like a different film; it doesn't feel like a copycat of the previous films.

But it goes on forever. In between dreams, it drags, and when it gets to the dreams, they manage to be weird but not suspenseful or creepy. They're somewhat imaginative, but not enough. Sometimes they kind of work for a little while, but most of them are failures. The video game sequence is just plain stupid, and most of them aren't much better. On top of that, Freddy has more one-liners than all the other films combined --- yes, even more than he had in part 4 --- and every single one of them is absolutely lame. And never is anything even remotely creepy in the film.

But it might have been at least somewhat worthwhile if Freddy's inevitable death had been cool. But it isn't. His death in any of the other films in the series would have been better --- destroyed with holy water, torn apart by the souls he has taken, taken away by his mother, castrated and burned alive, or, best of all, what happened in the original: he isn't feared anymore. What happens here, though, is just dull. The entire climax just falls absolutely flat. Even Part 2 would have been a more satisfying end for the series. While the other poor ones are frustrating, I genuinely wish this one never existed.

Although, Johnny Depp does have a 15-second cameo that was pretty funny. And Breckin Meyer was amusing as a stoner.

But man, why couldn't they have found any better way to end the regular series? I mean, honestly, Freddy vs. Jason was more satisfying, and it didn't even have a frickin' ending! Now, you know what's really sad about this film? It's still better than 99.9% of slasher films. That's pathetic.

Six years after the original Nightmare, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), now a psychologist, finds that the kids at her workplace are having Freddy (Robert Englund) visit them in their dreams. For a little variation, one of the kids (Patricia Arquette) has a strange ability to bring other people into her dreams. Dreams containing spectacular special effects and imagination --- but not enough.

Wes Craven returned to the series as a co-writer, but direction was given to Chuck Russell. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing: Russell has one heck of an imagination, and, in spite of a minuscule five million dollar budget, he got the special effects people to put some great visions on screen in a freaky fashion that's convincing in a comic-bookish way, which is right for the film. Bad thing: Russell has no idea how to direct actors to give good dramatic performances or stage scenes where people actually talk to one another.

Now, at this point in time, Craven's writing was a little weak dramatically, but that was okay when he directed, because he knew how to make it look good. Russell, however, was new at the whole directing thing, and the dramatic scenes are pretty darn stiff. And the actors don't help. Langenkamp isn't a bad actress, but she's very inconsistent here. In the dream sequences, she's fine, but outside of them, she's a little wooden. Sadly, she out-acts most of the rest of the cast. They all have energy and seem to be putting a little effort into it, but very few actors in this film do anything memorable. Craig Wasson, as another psychologist, is okay but kind of dull. The rest of the teen-agers are one-dimensional at best. Not all of them are bad. Of course, Robert Englund is wonderful as Freddy. John Saxon plays his return about right. And Laurence Fishburne is completely real and convincing. He plays the role with conviction and believability. It's too bad he's only in the film for about five minutes.

But the acting isn't the real problem. None of it is bad enough to wreck or even seriously hurt the film. In spite of my complaining, the actors are at least adequate for what's needed. You don't really want any of them to die or anything. The problem is split between the writers (Craven, Russell, Frank Darabont in his pre-Shawshank days, and Bruce Wagner) and director Russell. Now Craven's basic story is good. In fact, it's a really good story that manages to be both a clever and fairly logical way to continue to series. Also, the decision to pretend Part 2 never happened was an excellent idea.

However, even though Craven made up a good story, Russell throws his wild imagination into the script, and the writer of the Shawshank freaking Redemption was involved, the script is fairly predictable and two-dimensional in spite of some great ideas. And, as I said, Russell is lost when someone isn't having a nightmare or hallucination or anything like that.

But then there are the nightmare scenes, some of which border on brilliant, all of which are pretty darn cool. The one with Freddy turning into a giant snake and slowly eating his prey is pretty intense, and most of the others are quite memorable (such as the guy puppeteer-ed with his own blood vessels, the Wizardmaster or whatever he was, the guy tied to a bed with cut off tongues, and the TV that comes to life very literally). The dreams aren't really scary, but they are atmospheric and freaky. And lots of fun to watch. They don't quite cross the line into truly great sequences, but they're pretty darn good.

And for the most part, the special effects work. They aren't totally convincing in a literal sense, but in the context of the film, they work just fine. The skeleton at the end is the only truly failed effect.

But good special effects aren't enough to rescue the film. It's still an obvious and wooden horror film that isn't scary. And yet, for some reason, I liked it anyway.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out why. The answer is the same answer to many of the flaws in the film: Chuck Russell. The atmosphere and energy and imagination of the film all combine to make it work on a B-rate comic book level. In fact, on that level, it works superbly.

So, in the end, I guess I had a lot of fun watching the movie. I just had to keep reminding myself to turn my brain off. I probably should have done that in the first place, but I was hoping for an intelligent horror film. Go into this film with the right expectations and you'll love it. Just realize it isn't going to work on the same levels that the original (as well as Wes Craven's New Nightmare) worked.