OK, with certain actors, you know what sort of film to expect if you've seen a couple of them already. Van Damme falls into this category, and having seen quite a few of them already, I thought I'd give this a shot when it was on Telly the other night. I expected it to be an undemanding action flick with JCVD doing a bit of martial arts and saving the day at the end, and in that respect I was right.
The plot outline is basically a mix of "Under Siege 2", "Outbreak" and "The Cassandra Crossing", all fine films in their own right. Granted, Under Siege 2 is hardly a masterpiece, but I'm using the same criteria of knowing what to expect before you see it, and if I have to watch two similar films, I would rather watch that one than this.
It wasn't the actual story that made this so awful - as I said, on it's own it's a run of the mill action film and in that respect no worse than many others. What made this so bad was what I can only describe as arty farty direction and production. At one point in the film it went into a split screen, one bit following one character, the other bit another. I think the premise behind it was that both bits of action were happening at the same time and both ended at the same time so you might as well show both at the same time. This made it difficult to follow exactly what was going on because you didn't know who to watch.
Later on it got worse. No more split screens, but you'd be watching a piece of action, and it would suddenly for a second or two switch angles, freeze frame, or go back a second or so, and you just could not follow it without getting a headache. More "cuts" like this occurred throughout the remainder of the film, and towards the end I'd just had enough. I'm not going to say what happened exactly, but it involved another train, and at that point I'd had enough. I "watched" the ending on fast forward (fortunately I had recorded it rather than watch it live) and the silliness continued.
JCVD may be a big name, but he is not a great actor and he does not make great films. If you watch his films you know this already, but to be fair, if that's what you want to watch, most are actually watchable. This one is not!
The plot outline is basically a mix of "Under Siege 2", "Outbreak" and "The Cassandra Crossing", all fine films in their own right. Granted, Under Siege 2 is hardly a masterpiece, but I'm using the same criteria of knowing what to expect before you see it, and if I have to watch two similar films, I would rather watch that one than this.
It wasn't the actual story that made this so awful - as I said, on it's own it's a run of the mill action film and in that respect no worse than many others. What made this so bad was what I can only describe as arty farty direction and production. At one point in the film it went into a split screen, one bit following one character, the other bit another. I think the premise behind it was that both bits of action were happening at the same time and both ended at the same time so you might as well show both at the same time. This made it difficult to follow exactly what was going on because you didn't know who to watch.
Later on it got worse. No more split screens, but you'd be watching a piece of action, and it would suddenly for a second or two switch angles, freeze frame, or go back a second or so, and you just could not follow it without getting a headache. More "cuts" like this occurred throughout the remainder of the film, and towards the end I'd just had enough. I'm not going to say what happened exactly, but it involved another train, and at that point I'd had enough. I "watched" the ending on fast forward (fortunately I had recorded it rather than watch it live) and the silliness continued.
JCVD may be a big name, but he is not a great actor and he does not make great films. If you watch his films you know this already, but to be fair, if that's what you want to watch, most are actually watchable. This one is not!
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