A Dazzling but Uneven Display

Rating: 7/10 (23 January 2019)

3 April 2005. This amazing looking film attempts to introduce graphic cartoon/novels into live action and does so very successfully along with an unfortunate Pulp Fiction interplay of various independent plots that is less than successful. This raw, intensely, graphic violent film replicates in great detail the actual feel and visceral experience of a adult film noire cartoon (the best to date, setting a new level of qualitative black and white retro film-making). This is a movie with male testosterone and male honor with a big, big heart. It explodes off the screen (not page) with a punch that hits to the core. However, one wonders how much more powerful the movie would have been if it had actually followed a linear comic book line instead of interspliced scenes. The movie successfully exploits the emotional buttons as well as the over-the-top rampage of devastation that is rarely allowed on the screen R-Rated through probably deletion of the most obscene scenes (with most of it directly suggested). This movie also is reminiscent of the physical mayhem in Clock-Work Orange. Seven out of Ten Stars - could have been a complete knockout, but it threw in a few too many punches.