mondojohnson

This one took me by surprise on many fronts.

First off, it is gloriously situated in Hong Kong, which is on display with seductively garish, sexy and exciting mystery. The tangle of bamboo, steel and neon reaches up forever, a multi-dimensional hive of alluring and potent hidden spaces. The visual love-letter to Hong Kong was enough on its own to sustain my interest.

But the film has other revelations as well, the most prominent being the surprisingly great performance by Dakota Fanning as Cassie, a young psychic orphan whose prophecies drive much of the intrigue. Her world-weary nymphette is on par with Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver or Natalie Portman in Léon … the girl has got an old soul, or something. I didn’t think much of her prepubescent roles, but now she is someone to keep an eye on.

In addition to the Hong Kong eye candy, there is also the exceptional male eye candy of Cliff Curtis, Djimon Honsou, and the two Chinese punk rock psychic assassins.

And the plot gets into some clever structure in the third act. It takes a small effort at the beginning of the film to process the background info — psychics on the run from an evil world conspiracy to make them perfect soldiers — but it is well worth the effort.