eat your heart out mickey spillane

Rating: 9/10 (2 April 2005)

having only recently been indoctrinated into the callous world of the sin city comics, i wasn't sure that i would be able to judge the movie fairly. months earlier when i first read them, i loved the overall feel and pace to them and friends and i would discuss how a movie version of this should go off. as information became more available i became more assured that the movie would be great. Robert Rodriguez as director? super. mickey Rourke as Marv? bonanza! but still an inkling of fear remained that the ratings board would nueter the film and derail the overall quality. surprise surprise when this movie came out pound for pound every bit as violent as Natural Born Killlers (a movie that had an infinite amount of problems with the fascist MPAA) and yet raised not an eyebrow.
then the film comes out on April fools day. what a set up. i must say that i have not been this impressed with a comic book movie since the first batman in 1989. robert rodriguez met and exceeded all expectations by dogmatically adhering to the novels themselves. the movie was born free of director and actor ego that often muddles good work. performances by Rourke, Willis, Alba, and the rest are exactly right. the look and feel of the film is wonderful. the violence is far enough over the top and the female nudity sprinkled generously enough that a warm feeling settled in my stomach by movie's end i like the wittle wittle movie oh course, said nudity and violence does seem to slow by the end to a crawl but i think the director planned it that way to reverse the common action picture logic of a final build up of violence/chase sequence/confrontation et cetera. here instead the violence is unleash from the word go, and then the movie changes gears and the director says, "okay, you've seen this, now look at this".
brilliant ten out of ten and hey i'm one of the first voters