Sin City
The film was rated 18 in the UK, R in the US, trivia fans.
I wouldn't really recommend this film, because I think, so long as you know roughly what it's about, you'll decide for yourself whether you want to see it or not, based on how you think the content will affect you. My reaction was much as I had expected it to be - I came out annoyed that men get so much money to put up their fantasies and make them eye-popping. Women don't - chick fantasy movies are practically always filtered through male perceptions of what we want.
I had other thoughts too, but the film is so blatant about being a fantasy - the four male narrators get to tell their story, the girls get to look pretty and be vicious. But they do not talk. And when they do, it is to defer to those big, strong men. It is weird that I got a kick out of two of the silent characters - Devon Aoki's force of nature, Miho, (and yes, I am duly disturbed by the fact that I enjoyed the violent, porcelain faced, killing-doll, but she flew and she had two swords, perhaps, too, the fact that she was fighting for other women who were like her clouded the fact that she thrived on violence and torture) and I was pleased to get to see Elijah Wood's capability for creepiness on such display. It was both fun to see The Geek (Kevin might have been his name, but given the glasses and the jumper, that's the archetype he was playing, shades of The Faculty) with the superpowers, and chilling to discover his cannibalism and squicky relationship with one of the Roarks.
Actually, being drawn to the silence is not that surprising, it's a comic book movie and the visual element is by far the strongest thing about it. Unlike the FilmFour ads riffing off the look, the film uses its splashes of colour sparingly, and I thought that on the whole it did a good job of making it all kinetic. But the dialogue was pulpy, John Patterson thought it didn't compared to the taut dialogue of true noir, but unlike the row sniggering behind me, I found its pulpiness comfortable. Well, by the end the repetition was irksome, it was always steaks, always death=the end of the narration. Rourke and Willis did better with their characters and dialogue than Clive Owen, but maybe I was hearing the accent too much there.
So we heard all about their story, these men who 'had' to kill, Miller's voices - with two admitting they were possibly deluding themselves, Hartigan, not. (And there was The Man, Josh Hatnett's bookending hitman, who would get more than his due attention if I were writing a full on femenist critique of this.) And around these men were the women, one 'angeel', one 'warrior woman' and one 'innocent little girl'. How.. nice for them.
In a way, I know it is pointless to rail that all the girls are scant twenty somethings (apart from the judge with the frizzy hair), I knew that going in. It was just very overwhelming, and ridiculous, and blatant. And unengaging. I was drawn in by the overarching fight against the Roarks and their farm (and I liked that the third story went back in time), the prostitutes' fight to keep Old Town on their terms, not the cops' and not the mobs, was the most gripping strand. But of course, despite the attitude and look, and the hardware, they needed Clive Owen to save 'em. (They even needed the hitman at the end. Now if we'd had Miho in with a nifty new weapon to finish off their snitch, presumably at Gail's behest...it would have been a diluted film. As, presumably, would using Nancy's skills with the lassoo when her captor let go of the rope, which seemed like a logical step to me. But again, that would've diluted the worldview of a grim, rainy city where the men do stuff, and the women are mosly naked girls, waiting to be taken away, and mostly disappointed.
I had most issues with the final third of the film, because I was bored enough to have them. In the first part, I'd been drawn in by the set up of Sin City, the mystery of how much Marv's mental illness was affecting him (although given the straightforwardness of the narrative, it wasn't that much) and the horror of the gothick revelations about the cannibalism and all the rest of it. Despite Brittany Murphy's, er, weird acting choices, the gratuitous and yet shallow playing around with Nazi and S and M imagery, the Irish/terrorism/mercenary linkage, and the fact that black and white explosions are apparently rubbish, the second part gripped me too. But I found the third strand, essentially dull.
For starters, it was unfortunate that the horrible monstrous child-rapist-killer Roark looked a bit like a Ferengi, only yellow. That kind of link completely deflates much of his effect. Then there's the fact that Jessica Alba can't act that well (I've been giving her breaks because I was comparing her to other actresses of a similar age who did TV work. And she wasn't always wooden as Max.). Alba worked as Nancy, both fantasy object for Hartigan and her customers, innocent version of the general take on women - when she wasn't talking. Then she talked, and I was confused. There was a weird disjoint between her and the kid who played little Nancy. Apart from the hair, they...didn't feel like the same person. And really, I had no idea who Nancy was meant to be, which I did get from everyone else.
So I slunk into my pop-psychology corner, where all the guns and knives are obviously phallic, the castration fear is beyond palpable and the father fixation and Hartigan's continual reminders of everyone's age were too loud. (Though I liked Willis, they should have got someone older to play the character.) But pop psychology is more fun when the objects isn't so dunderingly obvious, so I ended up sniggering because I was transposing a meta level of what I knew about the actors' previous relationships on to Nancy/Hartigan. Which all goes to show that that third and its central dynamic 'innocent' 'noble but flawed and guilty vigilante' and 'monster' didn't engage me at all, in this version. The story was both sentimental and icky and - again, watching some guy's fantasy writ large and snagging cool visuals apparently does not hold my interest that long.
Oh, and reason number 5,000 why Jessica Alba should not have blonde hair? Jamie King's character was a better blonde. I wish I'd thought to save other people's reviews and thoughts from when it was out in the States now
I'm not sure why 18 cert DARK COMIC BOOK ADAPTATION translated into trailers for a couple of big blockbusters, and mainly 15 cert rubbish-looking horror movies that don't appeal at all. Still, I never learn, despite the 'directed by Michael Bay' I saw the trailer for The Island and well, I'm still squeeing. Ewan McGregor, Sean Bean, explosions, delicious scifi staple set up. The explosions should be good, right!?
I wouldn't really recommend this film, because I think, so long as you know roughly what it's about, you'll decide for yourself whether you want to see it or not, based on how you think the content will affect you. My reaction was much as I had expected it to be - I came out annoyed that men get so much money to put up their fantasies and make them eye-popping. Women don't - chick fantasy movies are practically always filtered through male perceptions of what we want.
I had other thoughts too, but the film is so blatant about being a fantasy - the four male narrators get to tell their story, the girls get to look pretty and be vicious. But they do not talk. And when they do, it is to defer to those big, strong men. It is weird that I got a kick out of two of the silent characters - Devon Aoki's force of nature, Miho, (and yes, I am duly disturbed by the fact that I enjoyed the violent, porcelain faced, killing-doll, but she flew and she had two swords, perhaps, too, the fact that she was fighting for other women who were like her clouded the fact that she thrived on violence and torture) and I was pleased to get to see Elijah Wood's capability for creepiness on such display. It was both fun to see The Geek (Kevin might have been his name, but given the glasses and the jumper, that's the archetype he was playing, shades of The Faculty) with the superpowers, and chilling to discover his cannibalism and squicky relationship with one of the Roarks.
Actually, being drawn to the silence is not that surprising, it's a comic book movie and the visual element is by far the strongest thing about it. Unlike the FilmFour ads riffing off the look, the film uses its splashes of colour sparingly, and I thought that on the whole it did a good job of making it all kinetic. But the dialogue was pulpy, John Patterson thought it didn't compared to the taut dialogue of true noir, but unlike the row sniggering behind me, I found its pulpiness comfortable. Well, by the end the repetition was irksome, it was always steaks, always death=the end of the narration. Rourke and Willis did better with their characters and dialogue than Clive Owen, but maybe I was hearing the accent too much there.
So we heard all about their story, these men who 'had' to kill, Miller's voices - with two admitting they were possibly deluding themselves, Hartigan, not. (And there was The Man, Josh Hatnett's bookending hitman, who would get more than his due attention if I were writing a full on femenist critique of this.) And around these men were the women, one 'angeel', one 'warrior woman' and one 'innocent little girl'. How.. nice for them.
In a way, I know it is pointless to rail that all the girls are scant twenty somethings (apart from the judge with the frizzy hair), I knew that going in. It was just very overwhelming, and ridiculous, and blatant. And unengaging. I was drawn in by the overarching fight against the Roarks and their farm (and I liked that the third story went back in time), the prostitutes' fight to keep Old Town on their terms, not the cops' and not the mobs, was the most gripping strand. But of course, despite the attitude and look, and the hardware, they needed Clive Owen to save 'em. (They even needed the hitman at the end. Now if we'd had Miho in with a nifty new weapon to finish off their snitch, presumably at Gail's behest...it would have been a diluted film. As, presumably, would using Nancy's skills with the lassoo when her captor let go of the rope, which seemed like a logical step to me. But again, that would've diluted the worldview of a grim, rainy city where the men do stuff, and the women are mosly naked girls, waiting to be taken away, and mostly disappointed.
I had most issues with the final third of the film, because I was bored enough to have them. In the first part, I'd been drawn in by the set up of Sin City, the mystery of how much Marv's mental illness was affecting him (although given the straightforwardness of the narrative, it wasn't that much) and the horror of the gothick revelations about the cannibalism and all the rest of it. Despite Brittany Murphy's, er, weird acting choices, the gratuitous and yet shallow playing around with Nazi and S and M imagery, the Irish/terrorism/mercenary linkage, and the fact that black and white explosions are apparently rubbish, the second part gripped me too. But I found the third strand, essentially dull.
For starters, it was unfortunate that the horrible monstrous child-rapist-killer Roark looked a bit like a Ferengi, only yellow. That kind of link completely deflates much of his effect. Then there's the fact that Jessica Alba can't act that well (I've been giving her breaks because I was comparing her to other actresses of a similar age who did TV work. And she wasn't always wooden as Max.). Alba worked as Nancy, both fantasy object for Hartigan and her customers, innocent version of the general take on women - when she wasn't talking. Then she talked, and I was confused. There was a weird disjoint between her and the kid who played little Nancy. Apart from the hair, they...didn't feel like the same person. And really, I had no idea who Nancy was meant to be, which I did get from everyone else.
So I slunk into my pop-psychology corner, where all the guns and knives are obviously phallic, the castration fear is beyond palpable and the father fixation and Hartigan's continual reminders of everyone's age were too loud. (Though I liked Willis, they should have got someone older to play the character.) But pop psychology is more fun when the objects isn't so dunderingly obvious, so I ended up sniggering because I was transposing a meta level of what I knew about the actors' previous relationships on to Nancy/Hartigan. Which all goes to show that that third and its central dynamic 'innocent' 'noble but flawed and guilty vigilante' and 'monster' didn't engage me at all, in this version. The story was both sentimental and icky and - again, watching some guy's fantasy writ large and snagging cool visuals apparently does not hold my interest that long.
Oh, and reason number 5,000 why Jessica Alba should not have blonde hair? Jamie King's character was a better blonde. I wish I'd thought to save other people's reviews and thoughts from when it was out in the States now
I'm not sure why 18 cert DARK COMIC BOOK ADAPTATION translated into trailers for a couple of big blockbusters, and mainly 15 cert rubbish-looking horror movies that don't appeal at all. Still, I never learn, despite the 'directed by Michael Bay' I saw the trailer for The Island and well, I'm still squeeing. Ewan McGregor, Sean Bean, explosions, delicious scifi staple set up. The explosions should be good, right!?