"Silent Hill"
Director: Christophe Gans
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 19
In a Nutshell: I thought it was a joke when somebody at the screening commented that they heard "Silent Hill" was over two-hours long. It wasn't. The movie, a rambling dud that attempts to replicate the logic of the popular video game (lots of finding of clues and picking up important tools and wandering from one creepy room to another), runs 127 minutes. How can that be allowed to happen? When studios hide movies from critics -- as this one was -- they're usually little 85 minute horror movies or exploitation comedies, bad movies where the expenditure was so low that they don't really need the publicity that comes from a good or bad review. Even "Aeon Flux" was a really short movie, even if it was probably costly. But somebody decided that Christophe Gans, a director only known for the fitfully amusing, but ultimately incoherent "Brotherhood of the Wolf," was entitled to as long as he wanted to tell his story? What a mistake! There's probably a perfectly acceptable 90 minute cut of this movie that accentuates the moody atmosphere, one or two freaky CGI creatures and Radha Mitchell running in a tight t-shirt. They could have cut Sean Bean's part out of the movie without any narrative loss at all. Oh well. Lots of movies stink. This one's still better than, say, "Ultraviolet."
My review is already up on Zap2it. It's longer than this. And more critical. Check it out.
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