This movie tries to be clever, but is really just an average action flick with an unbelievable plot. John Travolta is excellent in his role and Halle Berry is gorgeous, naturally, but the movie itself lacks a certain something. The basic idea seems to be that you have to fight terrorism with terrorism, but the actual execution of the plot is so twisted that you are left at the end saying “huh?”. I think the writer was aiming for a “Usual Suspects” kind of ending, but fails rather spectacularly to achieve anything remotely that brilliant. (*)

This is a wonderful movie documenting the life of Muhammad Ali. I don’t even like boxing, but I would have to say that I admire Ali. He’s got an incredible amount of charisma, it’s almost impossible not to like him — or at least respect his character. Geoff told me to watch this movie, and he was indeed right to recommend it. It was especially interesting to watch it after seeing Will Smith’s performance in Ali. (****)

Whenever I watch TV, I try to avoid watching previews of movies. I like to be surprised by movies and that is impossible to do if you’ve seen all the good bits in the previews. I also try to avoid hearing anything about the plot or any opinions on the show other than whether it is worth seeing or not. That way I can watch the movie and come up with my own opinions. I managed to do that quite often when I was living in Japan because I didn’t have a TV. It’s a bit harder to do here in Canada, but I managed to do it for this movie. I knew that it had Russell Crowe in it (not one of my favourites) and that’s about it. And my clean-slate opinion? It’s not a bad movie. It’s rather long, and I thought it was about to end several times, but having seen it all the way to the end, I can see why most of the scenes were left in. I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. (***)