joshduggan

I should preface this review by saying that I was indifferent as to how I might feel about this film going into it. I thought the first film was fairly good. It was entertaining, but nothing that made me yearn for a second one. That being said, I hadn't read a review of this film (and still haven't) and had only heard that it had received mixed reviews. I had tempered expectations going into the theater, but I was certainly open to a good time.

A good time was not had. This film was quite simply awful. I have not seen anything in a long time that made me marvel at the fact that it was actually the finished product of a gigantic summer film churned out by a Hollywood Studio. I saw X-Men 3. While that was dreadful, this was eons past X3 in terms of excrement put to celluloid.

The plot was akin to a second-grader's class project. There was zero character development and not a single moment in which you thought you were seeing an original thought projected onto the screen. While it is a sequel, at some point the things that happen to the characters should matter, and if something bad happens to a character, the events that have molded him or her to that point should affect the audience somehow. Instead, the tools responsible for this screenplay have events happen without emotionally investing the audience in any way, shape, or form as to the fate of the characters on-screen, simply hoping that writing an event will somehow tug at the heart-strings of the audience without ever having to earn it.

I don't know that it is entirely the filmmakers' fault, because it seems that Verbinski & Co. were tied to some P.O.S. script that was churned out in a matter of days to get the cameras rolling, so Disney could bend the movie-goer over and sodomize them while getting paid for it. In the place of an actual story, they were probably told to blow up the film with mind-numbing action sequences and lame special effects.

To add insult to injury, the film clocks in at a mere two-and-a-half hours, which for a film with a plot wouldn't bother me in the least, but when you can write out the entire plot of this film in a matter of moments, seeing that paper-thin storyline stretched into 150 minutes is unbearable.

I could even make an exception to all of the aforementioned gripes and say that there was something in the film worthwhile if there was one performance from the cast that was mildly amusing. Alas, there is not. The actors all seem to have mailed it in, including Depp, who had a single chuckle-worthy moment as a follow-up to an Oscar-nominated turn in the previous Pirates outing.

***********SPOILER ALERT*************** When it comes down to it, all you'll get from this film is an obscenely long prologue to Pirates of the Caribbean 3: The Search for Spock--I mean Jack, because the entire plot of this atrocious piece of refuse is enough to fill a mere introduction to a real story.

There is nothing about this film that is redeemable. The talents of Geoffrey Rush are completely wasted. This was the most ill-conceived concept for a film in recent history. I never saw the original, but I doubt it was this bad. If it weren't for the recognizable actors, I would think that a bunch of junior high kids slapped this travesty together. I highly recommend avoiding this film like the plague. I wish i could have the hour and a half of my life back that was wasted watching this heap of garbage.

"Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" is a poignant film that adeptly shows the futility of living in accordance with ancient ways in modern society. As the film unfolds, Jarmusch introduces his tragic urban hero, Ghost Dog. Within just a few seconds, the audience becomes fully aware that the hero of this tale is not your traditional hero/hitman. This is a man who has managed, in a heartless, materialistic society, to live by the virtues of the ancient Japanesse samurai. Surprisingly (in my eyes, at least), Whitaker portrays Ghost Dog impeccably, fully accentuating every nuance of Ghost Dog without missing a beat. Jarmusch has made a film which perfectly balances the adversity that his protagonist faces with light-hearted, touching scenes with Bankole and Winbush and hilarious scenes with Gorman imitating Flav-a-flav. Each shot is meticulously laid out with the end product being a visual and narrative masterpiece. This film is one of the very few outstanding films from the first half of the dismal year of 2000.