Engaging and perplexing

Rating: 7/10 (12 April 2010)

I don't know how much of a full "review" of this movie I can actually write based on one viewing, most especially as I was rather extremely hung over at least at the beginning of the movie. But actually I think that's not a bad way to watch it. This is quite an ambitious film, a lot of themes and ideas are being tossed around in the film that aren't directly anchored to the characters. Or the character as the case may be. I did really like the movie, but I thought that at times it got too slick with its presentation. It suffers from the same faults as all action films despite being a satire of action films on a certain level -- the action simply can't be intense enough to hold the hardcore audience's attention in the beginning and still ratchet up to something even more grotesque without becoming completely unreal and potentially laughable in and of itself. But you could say the same thing about some of Paul Verhoeven's best action satires like "Starship Troopers" that weren't even as clear as "Fight Club" about actually throwing the macho ethic into question. It seems to just go with the territory.
So in some respects this film belongs to the same school as films like Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly" or Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" in that it's a kind of theater of excess, basically throwing macho types out there and not so much deconstructing them as just pushing them so far over the edge that they already appear hyper-real. But I think the film sort of betrays that in some of its last sequences. That's the kind of thing that I think I'll be able to say later after I've seen it again. I do want to watch it again because certain scenes, especially the ones with Helena Bonham Carter (who I always WANT to like more than I usually do), are really appealing for some reason.
The thing that holds me back from embracing the movie is that it just seemed a bit too proud of itself, and the story was a bit too ridiculous even in the end when all was explained to actually take it as seriously as it seemed to want to be taken. I'm going to see what I think ultimately though at some later point. This is the type of movie that might either go up or down in my estimation when I have a better handle on it.