Daybreakers

I watched this film last night and while there were quite a few different aspects I liked, I felt this was one of those films where the whole is less than the sum of it's parts. As I watched it, I had a mental image of an earlier draft of the script (which was much leaner and tighter) being savaged by studio suits saying "no, you gotta a chase scene here, and make this part bigger, and add a romantic subplot, and blow more stuff up, and steal this idea from this movie..." and so on. The production design and cinematography were top notch, and the performances were strong (esp. Hawke and esp. considering how on the nose, cliched or obvious it sometimes was).

I personally think they would have been better off simplifying the story, eliminating some of the unessential (i.e. cliched) supporting characters and going with a more minimalistic, film noir approach and using less frantic editing. And instead of using the heavy handed and painfully obvious "pharmecutical companies are greedy bastards" moral theme, focus more on ambivalent moral choices forced on those who try to navigate around those in power who are seeking to exploit people (treating them like cattle in a literal sense) to maintain their comfortable existence and social order (ala the french collaborationists in occupied France), then add crisper & wittier dialog and a much darker ending.