John Doe: Vigilante has one genuinely interesting thing going for it: the dialogue-heavy moral debate between John Doe and Rutherford. At times, that part is sharp enough to make you rewind and actually listen. The problem is that almost everything else in the movie is weaker than the ideas it wants to argue. Critics noticed the same split: some called it thought-provoking, while others said it turns into a repetitive slog of talking heads and half-baked pseudo-intellectual posturing.   The vigilante premise is also absurdly sanitized because John Doe only seems to kill people with 100% certainty of guilt, which makes the movie feel less morally dangerous than it thinks it is. Add an unfinished, terrible ending and a lot of merely okay material around the central debate, and you get a film with clever ideas, a few smart lines, and not much else. Interesting brain, mediocre body.