...a futuristic film noir with big names, big sets, big budget, and enough weirdness to ensure HD-DVD sales for years to come.
Video:
For a film so dark as this one is, the HD-DVD colors and definition stand out. The screen dimensions are a tad less wide in "Reloaded" than in the first movie, but it's close enough. The picture quality is probably the same, too, but I swear that if anything the detailing and object definition seemed even crisper this time out. Imagination? Maybe, but it's excellent in any case.
Audio:
Again I chose the Dolby TrueHD option, and again I was not disappointed. Everything about it is exemplary: the frequency range, bass, dynamic response, and six-channel stereo spread making this special-effects-laden, science-fi extravaganza a sonic joy. The surround channels place ambient and background noises all around us, sometimes hardly noticeable except subliminally or subconsciously, to make the overall environment vivid and lifelike. Moreover, the TrueHD appeared a touch more robust to me than the DD+, which again seemed slightly brighter and more constricted.
Extras:
The HD-DVD for "The Matrix Reloaded" contains all of the extras we found on the standard-definition two-disc set, plus the picture-in-picture "In-Movie Experience" and several audio commentaries. The commentaries include ones by the philosophers and critics named above, and they pretty much continue along the same lines. There are also again the same language and HD-DVD options and a written introduction by the Wachowskis.
Among the extras are "Behind the Matrix," which includes four segments: "Preload," a twenty-two minute, behind-the-scenes production overview with the cast and crew explaining their part in the filmmaking; "The Matrix Unfolds," a five-minute look at the influence of "The Matrix" across movies, games, anime, and the Internet; "Get Me an Exit," nine minutes on the commercial advertising inspired by "The Matrix," like the Samsung phone used in the movie; and the cutest bit in the extras department, "The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded," nine minutes of fun and parody. After that is "Enter the Matrix," on the making of the video game, with a series of scenes from the game; a music video, "Sleeping Awake," by P.O.D.; and a whole lot of theatrical trailers and TV spots for the movie.
If you flip over the disc to the DVD side, you'll find even more stuff, all of it in standard definition and full-screen. First, there is a segment called "I'll Handle That," seventeen minutes on weapons and fighting. Second is the "Teahouse Fight," seven minutes on the famous fight scene. Third is "Car Chase," close to an hour-and-and-half of featurettes, nine in all, on "The Freeway Chase" from storyboards to models to actual shooting. It's probably more than you ever wanted to know about the intimate details of filmmaking, but it is informational at the very least. Fourth is "The Exiles," seventeen minutes on "The Exiles" and "The Architect's Office." Finally, there is "Unplugged," a forty-minute section on "Creating the Burly Brawl," with Master Wo Ping and others.
When Warner Bros. say there are over thirty-five hours of material in this collection, they aren't kidding.
The Matrix Revolutions
"The Matrix Revolutions" is well named. It continues to go around and around and around. Sometimes, it's better to quit when you're ahead.
"The Matrix" (1999) was an enjoyable sci-fi experience because it introduced us to some mind-boggling special effects, and it had at its core an interesting, although not entirely original, premise. The film's makers, Andy and Larry Wachowski, informed us in the first movie that we were all living in a dream. Machines had taken over the world, and each of us "humans" was really a prisoner curled up in a little pod being fed a program that simulated our existence. These ideas were not unprecedented. The view of life as a dream has been around since the ancient Greeks, and the idea of machines taking over the world has intrigued moviemakers before--in the twenties with "Metropolis," in the fifties with "Forbidden Planet," and, of course, in the eighties with "The Terminator," among others. But the concepts had never been elaborated so thoroughly or so graphically until "The Matrix."
You'll also remember that in the first film a small group of human resistance fighters were doing all they could to thwart the machines while waiting for a savior, who turned up in the person of a computer hacker named Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), later called Neo, presumably the new deliverer of Mankind. The plot of "The Matrix" unfolded slowly, finally revealing the predicament the world was in and implying that Neo would save the day. It was fun. And it probably should have ended right there. But where would the profits have been in that? Sequels are a time-honored Hollywood tradition.
So, we got "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions," made back to back and released in 2003. It was a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Frankly, though, one movie would have been enough, since there really wasn't enough material to spread out effectively over two complete films.
"Reloaded" started out several months after the first movie left off, the machines marching against the last remaining human city, Zion. Added was the script's exploration of free will versus fate, a point pursued only to a minor extent and which I had hoped would be amplified in the final segment, because the way it was handled in number two had simply left things confused. Alas, it was not to be. "Revolutions" only expands upon the action-adventure aspects of the previous movies.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed "Reloaded" for its extended visual style, meaning that its sets and special effects were more complex and more fascinating than ever to look at. The second film was less innovative than the first film, true, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Unfortunately, this third episode, "Revolutions," does little new in terms of storyline or visual-effects. It is basically just more of the same, with nothing surprising, nothing any longer mind-boggling, and nothing most viewers couldn't guess would happen going in.
As the movie begins, there are only some twenty hours left until the machines reach the human citadel of Zion, and it's up to Neo to rescue the human race. He must go to the Emerald City, speak to the Wizard, and free the land of the Wicked Witch of the West. Or something like that. If you're the sort of person who enjoys finding pieces of "The Wizard of Oz" in Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," you'll have a field day with this picture.
As "Revolutions" starts, Neo is trapped between the real world and the Matrix, and only the Frenchman can help transport him between the two planes. Next, a whole lot of stuff happens inexplicably, just because it looks good. We meet some program people, for instance, who turn out to be more human than most humans. But practically nothing is made of it.
In fact, the whole movie comes more than ever to resemble a video game, with one encounter after another, each bigger and more eccentric than the ones it left behind, each with increasingly more-exaggerated special effects. The movie is overlong at 129 minutes, but if you take out all of the punching, kicking, shooting, somersaulting, jabbering, and intense staring, it's about two minutes, probably long enough. And don't forget the old war-movie clichés and red herrings, which don't help, either.
People in the film continue to indulge in the same sort of fortune-cookie philosophy they were spouting in the last film, like the Oracle saying, "No one can see beyond a choice they don't understand." This kind of pseudo-mystical dialogue permeates "Revolutions" for no other reason, I suspect, than to make the movie appear more profound than it really is. Apparently, the filmmakers expended their repertoire of abstruse ideas in the first film and had to resort to nonsense in the second and third segments. The "Architect." The "Source." The "One." Whatever happened to the magic and mystery of the first installment? They've been replaced by more diffuse language, more extravagant computer graphic imagery, and more mundane explanations. Arthur C. Clarke did not improve upon "2001" by over-explaining things in "2010." Neither do the Wachowskis improve upon "The Matrix" by taking us behind the curtain of Oz. More is not necessarily better.
I was willing to give "Reloaded" the benefit of the doubt because I enjoyed its look. But "Revolutions" adds nothing fresh to the formula. The big battle sequence, which comprises maybe half the film with its conflict between squid-like machine Sentinels and Mech-Warrior human weaponry, is glorious for about ten minutes but then seems to go on forever. What's more, while some of the CGI work is terrific (the aforementioned Sentinels especially), too much of it appears frustratingly ordinary rather than approaching anything like fantasy realism. The laser fire, for instance, seems to me no better than the laser blasts in the original "Star Wars" over a quarter of a century ago. Then, after an admittedly clever confrontation with Smith, the movie ends. Sort of. Yet it doesn't really end. As any computer user knows, what can be deleted can be undeleted.
It isn't that "The Matrix Revolutions" is a bad movie; it isn't. It's that "Revolutions" is a disappointing movie, given all that has come before it and all that it could have been. I suspect many "Matrix" fans like me were looking forward to some kind of smart, startling, imaginative climax, something that would make us all say, "Wow! Cool! I never expected that!" But it doesn't happen. Instead, we get a wholly prosaic, commonplace ending.
"The Matrix Revolutions" may go out with a lot of loud bangs, but when it's over, it seems more like a whimper. Maybe we can pretend it didn't happen. 5/10
Video:
Since "Revolutions" and "Reloaded" were filmed at about the same time, we would expect them to look pretty much alike, and they do. The HD-DVD continues to improve the picture quality over the old standard-definition editions, and the remarkable clarity continues to improve one's enjoyment of the film's often spectacular visual effects.
Audio:
Again, choose Dolby TrueHD 5.1 if you can. Basically, the sound is identical to the sound in the previous film, with both TrueHD and DD+ a step up from regular Dolby Digital 5.1
Extras:
Again, we get all of the extras found on the two-disc standard-definition set, plus the "In-Movie Experience" and two audio commentaries. Like "Reloaded," this movie comes with English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. In addition, there are thirty-three scene selections and a big collection of theatrical trailers and TV spots. As before, there are two audio commentaries are by our pals the film critics and the philosophers. Add to that another written introduction by the Wachowskis and a ninety-minute documentary, "Behind the Matrix."
I swear after watching all of these making-of features, they all began looking alike to me. Anyway, "Behind the Matrix" contains things like "Neo Realism: The Evolution of Bullet Time," more on special effects; "Super Big Mini Models," filming the world of models and miniatures; "Double Agent Smith," a look at what it took to make the final scene, including the work to replicate Hugo Weaving with body doubles, lifelike mannequins, head casts, and costumes; "Mind Over Matter: The Physicality of The Matrix," a look at the dramatic stunts of "The Matrix"; and on and on.
The second side of the disc, the DVD side, contains hours more extras in seven categories. First, there is "Before the Revolution," a timeline of the development occurring in the "Matrix" story, followed by "3-D Evolution, with concept art and storyboards. Second, we have "Super Burly Brawl," seventeen minutes and divided into five segments: "The Skybarn," "The Crater," "The Egg," "Anatomy of the Superbrawl," and "Super Burly Brawl." Third is a thirty-nine-minute ordeal called "Aftermath," four segments on the film's composition and final adjustments. Fourth, there is "Crew," twenty-five minutes on the art department, the second unit, the cinematographer, and the lighting people. Fifth up we have "New Blue World," twenty-six minutes' worth of info on the geography of Zion, the ships, the Neb, and such. Sixth is "Hel," twenty-seven more minutes on special effects. And seventh is "Siege," about forty minutes on the final battle. Oddly, this was the only segment of the seven that refused to show me any timings in the "Play All" mode.
The Matrix Experience: Two-Disc Databank
Warner Bros. tell us that like the second sides of the first three discs, the fourth and fifth discs, together called "The Matrix Experience," are available only in "The Ultimate Matrix Collection." They don't say whether that's a good or a bad thing.
These final two discs are double-sided DVDs containing material in standard definition, and there is a lot of it. The centerpiece of disc four, side one is "The Animatrix," a series of nine animated short subjects, all of them related to the theme of "The Matrix." The nine films total about 100 minutes, and they range in style from 3-D CGI through anime, rotoscoping, dark comics, and graphic novels, mostly in color, with one in black-and-white. In addition, side one contains almost an hour of "Making of" material related to "The Animatrix"; audio commentaries on the films; text information on the directors and producers of the films; and a twenty-two-minute segment on "The History and Culture of Anime."
Side two is where you'll find the stuff that takes itself most seriously. There are two sixty-minute documentaries titled "Return to the Source: Philosophy and the Matrix" and "The Hard Problem: The Science Behind the Fiction." You can guess what they're about and how they try to persuade you that "The Matrix" movies are more than just punch-kick-and-special-effects extravaganzas.
On the final disc, side one, we find "The Burly Man Chronicles," "Pre-Production," "Alameda Shoot," and "Australian Shoot." I'd swear I had seen all of this the day before when I was watching the first three movie discs, but, as I've said, it began looking alike to me after a while. "The Burly Man" business is about ninety-four minutes long; the other three parts total about thirty-two minutes, with additional information if you want to click on the "White Rabbit" icons along the way.
Side two wraps everything up...finally. It contains "The Zion Archive," galleries of storyboards, characters, ships, machines, etc.; "The Rave Reel," nine minutes of spacey graphics; "The Matrix Online," a nine-minute preview of the video game; two music videos; and yet more theatrical trailers and TV spots.
Parting Thoughts:
Despite the fact that the original "Matrix" can stand perfectly well on its own, and despite the fact that the filmmakers could have combined the second and third installments into one movie instead of padding them out into two longer movies for more profit, I still find the story's premise fascinating enough, the stunts exciting enough, and the HD-DVD picture and sound good enough to sustain repeat viewing. My film rating below, a "6," is an average score for all three movies (7, 6, and 5).
For a film so dark as this one is, the HD-DVD colors and definition stand out. The screen dimensions are a tad less wide in "Reloaded" than in the first movie, but it's close enough. The picture quality is probably the same, too, but I swear that if anything the detailing and object definition seemed even crisper this time out. Imagination? Maybe, but it's excellent in any case.
Audio:
Again I chose the Dolby TrueHD option, and again I was not disappointed. Everything about it is exemplary: the frequency range, bass, dynamic response, and six-channel stereo spread making this special-effects-laden, science-fi extravaganza a sonic joy. The surround channels place ambient and background noises all around us, sometimes hardly noticeable except subliminally or subconsciously, to make the overall environment vivid and lifelike. Moreover, the TrueHD appeared a touch more robust to me than the DD+, which again seemed slightly brighter and more constricted.
Extras:
The HD-DVD for "The Matrix Reloaded" contains all of the extras we found on the standard-definition two-disc set, plus the picture-in-picture "In-Movie Experience" and several audio commentaries. The commentaries include ones by the philosophers and critics named above, and they pretty much continue along the same lines. There are also again the same language and HD-DVD options and a written introduction by the Wachowskis.
Among the extras are "Behind the Matrix," which includes four segments: "Preload," a twenty-two minute, behind-the-scenes production overview with the cast and crew explaining their part in the filmmaking; "The Matrix Unfolds," a five-minute look at the influence of "The Matrix" across movies, games, anime, and the Internet; "Get Me an Exit," nine minutes on the commercial advertising inspired by "The Matrix," like the Samsung phone used in the movie; and the cutest bit in the extras department, "The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded," nine minutes of fun and parody. After that is "Enter the Matrix," on the making of the video game, with a series of scenes from the game; a music video, "Sleeping Awake," by P.O.D.; and a whole lot of theatrical trailers and TV spots for the movie.
If you flip over the disc to the DVD side, you'll find even more stuff, all of it in standard definition and full-screen. First, there is a segment called "I'll Handle That," seventeen minutes on weapons and fighting. Second is the "Teahouse Fight," seven minutes on the famous fight scene. Third is "Car Chase," close to an hour-and-and-half of featurettes, nine in all, on "The Freeway Chase" from storyboards to models to actual shooting. It's probably more than you ever wanted to know about the intimate details of filmmaking, but it is informational at the very least. Fourth is "The Exiles," seventeen minutes on "The Exiles" and "The Architect's Office." Finally, there is "Unplugged," a forty-minute section on "Creating the Burly Brawl," with Master Wo Ping and others.
When Warner Bros. say there are over thirty-five hours of material in this collection, they aren't kidding.
The Matrix Revolutions
"The Matrix Revolutions" is well named. It continues to go around and around and around. Sometimes, it's better to quit when you're ahead.
"The Matrix" (1999) was an enjoyable sci-fi experience because it introduced us to some mind-boggling special effects, and it had at its core an interesting, although not entirely original, premise. The film's makers, Andy and Larry Wachowski, informed us in the first movie that we were all living in a dream. Machines had taken over the world, and each of us "humans" was really a prisoner curled up in a little pod being fed a program that simulated our existence. These ideas were not unprecedented. The view of life as a dream has been around since the ancient Greeks, and the idea of machines taking over the world has intrigued moviemakers before--in the twenties with "Metropolis," in the fifties with "Forbidden Planet," and, of course, in the eighties with "The Terminator," among others. But the concepts had never been elaborated so thoroughly or so graphically until "The Matrix."
You'll also remember that in the first film a small group of human resistance fighters were doing all they could to thwart the machines while waiting for a savior, who turned up in the person of a computer hacker named Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), later called Neo, presumably the new deliverer of Mankind. The plot of "The Matrix" unfolded slowly, finally revealing the predicament the world was in and implying that Neo would save the day. It was fun. And it probably should have ended right there. But where would the profits have been in that? Sequels are a time-honored Hollywood tradition.
So, we got "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions," made back to back and released in 2003. It was a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Frankly, though, one movie would have been enough, since there really wasn't enough material to spread out effectively over two complete films.
"Reloaded" started out several months after the first movie left off, the machines marching against the last remaining human city, Zion. Added was the script's exploration of free will versus fate, a point pursued only to a minor extent and which I had hoped would be amplified in the final segment, because the way it was handled in number two had simply left things confused. Alas, it was not to be. "Revolutions" only expands upon the action-adventure aspects of the previous movies.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed "Reloaded" for its extended visual style, meaning that its sets and special effects were more complex and more fascinating than ever to look at. The second film was less innovative than the first film, true, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Unfortunately, this third episode, "Revolutions," does little new in terms of storyline or visual-effects. It is basically just more of the same, with nothing surprising, nothing any longer mind-boggling, and nothing most viewers couldn't guess would happen going in.
As the movie begins, there are only some twenty hours left until the machines reach the human citadel of Zion, and it's up to Neo to rescue the human race. He must go to the Emerald City, speak to the Wizard, and free the land of the Wicked Witch of the West. Or something like that. If you're the sort of person who enjoys finding pieces of "The Wizard of Oz" in Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," you'll have a field day with this picture.
As "Revolutions" starts, Neo is trapped between the real world and the Matrix, and only the Frenchman can help transport him between the two planes. Next, a whole lot of stuff happens inexplicably, just because it looks good. We meet some program people, for instance, who turn out to be more human than most humans. But practically nothing is made of it.
In fact, the whole movie comes more than ever to resemble a video game, with one encounter after another, each bigger and more eccentric than the ones it left behind, each with increasingly more-exaggerated special effects. The movie is overlong at 129 minutes, but if you take out all of the punching, kicking, shooting, somersaulting, jabbering, and intense staring, it's about two minutes, probably long enough. And don't forget the old war-movie clichés and red herrings, which don't help, either.
People in the film continue to indulge in the same sort of fortune-cookie philosophy they were spouting in the last film, like the Oracle saying, "No one can see beyond a choice they don't understand." This kind of pseudo-mystical dialogue permeates "Revolutions" for no other reason, I suspect, than to make the movie appear more profound than it really is. Apparently, the filmmakers expended their repertoire of abstruse ideas in the first film and had to resort to nonsense in the second and third segments. The "Architect." The "Source." The "One." Whatever happened to the magic and mystery of the first installment? They've been replaced by more diffuse language, more extravagant computer graphic imagery, and more mundane explanations. Arthur C. Clarke did not improve upon "2001" by over-explaining things in "2010." Neither do the Wachowskis improve upon "The Matrix" by taking us behind the curtain of Oz. More is not necessarily better.
I was willing to give "Reloaded" the benefit of the doubt because I enjoyed its look. But "Revolutions" adds nothing fresh to the formula. The big battle sequence, which comprises maybe half the film with its conflict between squid-like machine Sentinels and Mech-Warrior human weaponry, is glorious for about ten minutes but then seems to go on forever. What's more, while some of the CGI work is terrific (the aforementioned Sentinels especially), too much of it appears frustratingly ordinary rather than approaching anything like fantasy realism. The laser fire, for instance, seems to me no better than the laser blasts in the original "Star Wars" over a quarter of a century ago. Then, after an admittedly clever confrontation with Smith, the movie ends. Sort of. Yet it doesn't really end. As any computer user knows, what can be deleted can be undeleted.
It isn't that "The Matrix Revolutions" is a bad movie; it isn't. It's that "Revolutions" is a disappointing movie, given all that has come before it and all that it could have been. I suspect many "Matrix" fans like me were looking forward to some kind of smart, startling, imaginative climax, something that would make us all say, "Wow! Cool! I never expected that!" But it doesn't happen. Instead, we get a wholly prosaic, commonplace ending.
"The Matrix Revolutions" may go out with a lot of loud bangs, but when it's over, it seems more like a whimper. Maybe we can pretend it didn't happen. 5/10
Video:
Since "Revolutions" and "Reloaded" were filmed at about the same time, we would expect them to look pretty much alike, and they do. The HD-DVD continues to improve the picture quality over the old standard-definition editions, and the remarkable clarity continues to improve one's enjoyment of the film's often spectacular visual effects.
Audio:
Again, choose Dolby TrueHD 5.1 if you can. Basically, the sound is identical to the sound in the previous film, with both TrueHD and DD+ a step up from regular Dolby Digital 5.1
Extras:
Again, we get all of the extras found on the two-disc standard-definition set, plus the "In-Movie Experience" and two audio commentaries. Like "Reloaded," this movie comes with English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. In addition, there are thirty-three scene selections and a big collection of theatrical trailers and TV spots. As before, there are two audio commentaries are by our pals the film critics and the philosophers. Add to that another written introduction by the Wachowskis and a ninety-minute documentary, "Behind the Matrix."
I swear after watching all of these making-of features, they all began looking alike to me. Anyway, "Behind the Matrix" contains things like "Neo Realism: The Evolution of Bullet Time," more on special effects; "Super Big Mini Models," filming the world of models and miniatures; "Double Agent Smith," a look at what it took to make the final scene, including the work to replicate Hugo Weaving with body doubles, lifelike mannequins, head casts, and costumes; "Mind Over Matter: The Physicality of The Matrix," a look at the dramatic stunts of "The Matrix"; and on and on.
The second side of the disc, the DVD side, contains hours more extras in seven categories. First, there is "Before the Revolution," a timeline of the development occurring in the "Matrix" story, followed by "3-D Evolution, with concept art and storyboards. Second, we have "Super Burly Brawl," seventeen minutes and divided into five segments: "The Skybarn," "The Crater," "The Egg," "Anatomy of the Superbrawl," and "Super Burly Brawl." Third is a thirty-nine-minute ordeal called "Aftermath," four segments on the film's composition and final adjustments. Fourth, there is "Crew," twenty-five minutes on the art department, the second unit, the cinematographer, and the lighting people. Fifth up we have "New Blue World," twenty-six minutes' worth of info on the geography of Zion, the ships, the Neb, and such. Sixth is "Hel," twenty-seven more minutes on special effects. And seventh is "Siege," about forty minutes on the final battle. Oddly, this was the only segment of the seven that refused to show me any timings in the "Play All" mode.
The Matrix Experience: Two-Disc Databank
Warner Bros. tell us that like the second sides of the first three discs, the fourth and fifth discs, together called "The Matrix Experience," are available only in "The Ultimate Matrix Collection." They don't say whether that's a good or a bad thing.
These final two discs are double-sided DVDs containing material in standard definition, and there is a lot of it. The centerpiece of disc four, side one is "The Animatrix," a series of nine animated short subjects, all of them related to the theme of "The Matrix." The nine films total about 100 minutes, and they range in style from 3-D CGI through anime, rotoscoping, dark comics, and graphic novels, mostly in color, with one in black-and-white. In addition, side one contains almost an hour of "Making of" material related to "The Animatrix"; audio commentaries on the films; text information on the directors and producers of the films; and a twenty-two-minute segment on "The History and Culture of Anime."
Side two is where you'll find the stuff that takes itself most seriously. There are two sixty-minute documentaries titled "Return to the Source: Philosophy and the Matrix" and "The Hard Problem: The Science Behind the Fiction." You can guess what they're about and how they try to persuade you that "The Matrix" movies are more than just punch-kick-and-special-effects extravaganzas.
On the final disc, side one, we find "The Burly Man Chronicles," "Pre-Production," "Alameda Shoot," and "Australian Shoot." I'd swear I had seen all of this the day before when I was watching the first three movie discs, but, as I've said, it began looking alike to me after a while. "The Burly Man" business is about ninety-four minutes long; the other three parts total about thirty-two minutes, with additional information if you want to click on the "White Rabbit" icons along the way.
Side two wraps everything up...finally. It contains "The Zion Archive," galleries of storyboards, characters, ships, machines, etc.; "The Rave Reel," nine minutes of spacey graphics; "The Matrix Online," a nine-minute preview of the video game; two music videos; and yet more theatrical trailers and TV spots.
Parting Thoughts:
Despite the fact that the original "Matrix" can stand perfectly well on its own, and despite the fact that the filmmakers could have combined the second and third installments into one movie instead of padding them out into two longer movies for more profit, I still find the story's premise fascinating enough, the stunts exciting enough, and the HD-DVD picture and sound good enough to sustain repeat viewing. My film rating below, a "6," is an average score for all three movies (7, 6, and 5).
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]21097[/release]