20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the End (2008)

The first part of a trilogy based on the popular manga by Naoki Urasawa tells of convenience store owner Kenji Endō and his connection to a bizarre cult. It jumps around a lot in time near the beginning, laying a foundation upon which the decades-spanning mystery is built upon.
The foundation itself is decent enough, and what follows is at times even intriguing, but by the second half, when it turned from introspection to big-budget spectacle, my heart was no longer in it.
The portion of the trilogy that gets resolved in Part One was too choppy and the protagonist lacked depth, an occurrence that is very possibly a casualty of a twenty-two volume manga needing to be shortened for the screen. Maybe viewing the two subsequent parts will help the overall feeling.

3 saviour songs out of 5