The series continues to entertain, but also not quite succeeding in winning me over. To be honest, if it hadn't been for the return of Raze, I might not have given this a chance at all; Kevin Grevioux is just plain a bad-ass. That's his *real voice*! Seriously, listen to interviews with him. While I would have liked more of him in this, I'm honest enough to admit that the entire 80 minute running time could have had him in every shot, and I'd still be saying that it's not enough. For Tatopoulos having relatively little experience at directing(I guess he got tired of being consultant for when giant mutated lizards attack), he does rather well. And this definitely has a *gorgeous* Gothic look, and the dark tone of the first two. The cinematography and editing are great, and the use of hand-held is effective, although several bits go by so fast that you can't tell what is going on. Nearly every(and certainly every lead) performance is impressive; Sheen continues the stellar work, Nighy(apart from being over the top at points) is marvelous, of course, and I wouldn't mind seeing Mitra be the lead in something else. I hadn't seen her in this large a part before, and she does well. The action is cool, intense and fun; of course, given that this is a prequel, you may miss the shoot-outs and car-chases of the prior 2 entries. With that said, the sword-fighting is great. The FX are excellent, and smoothly integrated. To its credit, at its core, this is a story about slaves rising up against their masters, and it does engage pretty well. There is plenty of brutal, bloody violence, a little sexuality(hot, though not graphic; and this has eye candy for both genders) and brief male, infant nudity in this. The DVD comes with an informative and amusing commentary track, three well-done featurettes of 9, 20 and 13 minutes length, respectively, a music video and a handful of trailers. I recommend this to any fan of the franchise(and this is best watched after the others). 7/10
