The opening visuals are entrancing and even border on spellbinding, two hands sewing the finishing stitches on a creature made to carry on this post-apocalyptic worlds life. A world where machines and humans have collided, a world we are far too familiar with in Hollywood from Terminator to The Matrix and now to Tim Burton’s producing credit 9. The sad thing about this cgi-sci-fi flick is that Hollywood seems to think dialogue is not important when there is action scene after action scene to compensate. The screenplay is plagued with command after command line , it never tackles the complex themes it aspires to actually cover. 9 asks the question we always ask “why are we here”, but it never even tries to answer it allowing it’s nevertheless amazing visuals to stomp all over it.

9 stars Elijah Wood as the youngest and most intelligent “creature” (which reminded me much of the creatures from Sony’s Little Big Planet) always defying authority, and making dangerous, action packed decisions.  The authority, voiced by Christopher Plummer is #1, who seems to think that keeping to themselves will save them from total extinction and annihilation. Jennifer Connely voices #7, a pretty bad ass creature that is introduced via a visually appetizing decapitation. If you wanna see a movie this year that is visually exciting, has astounding cinematic photography, and leads to absolutely no where, this is your ticket. And although this flick isn’t directed at pre-teens or children alike, it does drum on the same kind of silly underwritten dialogue that hangs way beneath its visual caliber.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 7:42 pm and is filed under 2.5, Film Reviews, Max Hope. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.