An average movie

I had actually already seen this flick but it was a very long time ago so I thought it really deserved a second shot. It was Christophe Gans's second directing effort, one very talented French director who is unfortunately rather unproductive since he has made only 4 movies during the last 20 years. Anyway, this flick was really successful in France and it has become since then a cult-classic. Indeed, there is a lot to enjoy here. The biggest asset was the way they managed to mix a costume drama with many other genres like Western, martial-arts, horror and thriller. On paper, there is no way it should have worked but they really managed to mix all these eclectic elements. On top of that, the whole thing looked really nice and there was a very impressive cast. Still, somehow, I wasn't completely sold though. Indeed, the whole thing is so stylish that they didn’t pay too much attention to the plot and while it worked for most of the duration, in the last 30 minutes, it became terribly murky and filled with plot holes. Eventually, when you finally find out what it was all about, it barely made sense and I thought it was rather underwhelming. Still, even though I don’t think it is really a masterpiece, it is a daring and intriguing feature and it is definitely worth a look.

6/10