In my opinion...
the whole piece before, during and after the nuke explosion under the train tunnel... I mean... It was so merciless, tense, dark (and not only because it happened in the middle of the night)... that I can't understand how it fit into the whole movie.
Then again, it's always nice to watch Nicole Kidman walking around.
8/10
I know what you mean, it's like they brought in an extremely talented "ringer" to direct that portion of the film, then sent them home and let some film school intern do the rest of it. I first saw it on TV (a very big TV, but still..), and was just glued to the movie during those early scenes.
The only problems I had with the train thing were:
- The "red light eyes" on the renegade troopers. I suppose they thought the audience would be too stupid to realize they were using NV gear unless they gave them red LED eyes. If any of the soldiers hadn't been asleep, the red lights would have been a great target. It was just bad.
- The red laser light. When using NV gear, IR light (and thus IR laser light) is visible through the NV gear, but not to the naked eye - so you use IR laser illuminators for targeting when wearing NV gear, not visible spectrum laser illuminators. I suppose they thought the audience had never used NV gear or laser illuminators before (and they'd be right), so they'd expect more cool bright red stuff.
That said, aside from those two things, I loved those early scenes. To be fair, some things don't look as most uninitiated people expect they would, so as a director, you show them what they expect to see. It didn't look real, but it looked great (if you get my drift).
I understand completely. The average Joe doesn't know the ins and outs of military equipment and tactics, lol. They just know it looks cool.
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I came here looking for a post mentioning the opening sequence compared with the rest of the film. I?ve seen this movie several times on cable over the years, and had admired it to some extent. I tended to miss the opening scene during those various times, so I had forgotten about it. Anyway, this film was once again on cable tonight, but I caught the opening this time (just after the credits). I was thinking, what is this cheesy movie with the red-eyed villan running atop some scale-model trains, and what is this scenery-chewing general in the tunnel, looking very Hollywood bad-guy? It was laughable, yet vaguely familiar. Then, bam!, I realized with the shot of Nicole swimming that this was the opening of The Peacemaker! Whoa, it?s as if two completely different studios made this film, as you mentioned, except, you know, the opposite of what you said.
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