Film Reviews by NG

The hype around this film leads one to expect something a bit different, but unfortunately it does not live up to its promise.

The intertwining story of Frey and Max is sloppy in two different senses of the word: it is poorly written and overly sentimental. Typical Hollywood fare really as the outcome is entirely predictable. Neither of these characters is likeable, the viewer has no empathy for them and does not really care what happens to them.

The action parts are extreme and sometime quite nasty, unnecessarily so as we can easily understand the difficulties of trying to get to Elysium without having to experience this nastiness.

The Jodie Foster character is robotic and not a real villain and not likeable either. So one does not know quite what to make of her.

I expect that film goers who like action, violence and lots of swearing in their films will fine plenty to enjoy, but for me it all was rather a waste of time.

Hell in the Pacific was made in widescreen: 2.35:1 according to the IMDb. What is available here is a cropped 4:3 version. Since this is such a powerful classic film and a lot of the interaction between the two characters is lost, this is not good. On the US import featured on Amazon the ratio is correct.

The rating is for the film, not the presentation.