Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

The first time I saw the preview, I felt the title alone revealed more Hollywood clutter. However, this was marked as a "Still Hot" item at my local Tsutaya so I decided to pick it up just for the hell of it. I should've gone with my gut instinct on this. Then again it doesn't take a brain surgeon to predict the continual sludge of uninspired dribble coming from Hollywood these days. First of all, it made no sense to me. Even though this is take on some comic book, I could tell just by the ridiculous advertising that it had some basis in that realm. The only remarkable part I could discern from the get go was Sean Connery being a major player. Probably that alone was my only motivation in seeing this film. However, he barely looked like he was trying in this movie. Despite his presence, the little dialogue strewn among the explosions vaguely gave me any notion of the direction the movie was going towards. Worse yet, having so many cast members in limited, unrememberable roles, you had to pick things up quickly. Most of it was just name dropping that the writer/director hoped the audience would recognize in an attempt to further the "plot." Yet this is more, typical Hollywood tripe in that it just contains insipid action that guarantees meaningless explosions that's supposed to outdo itself every time. Even when Dorian Gray turns against the League, you're still questioning the whole thing because the action has taken far too much precedence over the basic plot. Then there's Tom Sawyer. I wanted to start singing, "A modern-day warrior Mean mean stride Today's Tom Sawyer Mean mean pride." I mean, after all the European actors filter the screen, they had to bring this joker along. The obvious resonance is for being accepted by the American public for which Hollywood bows to. Are they afraid that Connery's name alone cannot carry a movie? It's not like getting Zhang Ziyi to play the whole show without subtitles. More than that, supposedly this guy doesn't even exist in the comic! Well, good thing I'm not a fan of this crap. It's just a way to kill brain cells. Crack and other drugs do that too, but Hollywood movies are just a legalized (and approved) method.