This film had its messages: about family and sacrifice and finding something bigger and more important than yourself to live and die for. However, the messages were not important enough to warrant the amount of graphic death it portrayed. Furthermore, the graphic images are not needed to show the horrors of senseless, wanton killing. Why do filmmakers think that spectators don't have enough imagination to understand horrible, multiple, senseless murder without actually seeing it? I do and I don't think I am particularly imaginative. Just as I can read a book (without pictures!) and be horrified, disgusted and moved to tears, I can do the same with a well-made movie. Maybe the filmmakers don't have enough confidence and faith in themselves to believe that they can make us "see" what they don't actually portray on the screen.
That said, I didn't completely dislike this film. I wouldn't recommend it without serious warning and without feeling badly that I was contributing to someone else's desensitizing, but . . . I was glad to see that Christian Bale had apparently made it to Santa Fe . . . (Newsies?)
