"What a sweet kid."

Rating: Null/10 (29 April 2005)

The movie is running right now in a little window right next to this one. I knew the comic quite well and I've followed Miller's work since the 80's, and I've been reading this board, so I pretty much knew what to expect. However, one thing I didn't expect was all the goddamned, never-ending babbling. Some of it is _extremely_ expeditionary... "And then I blah blah, and I thought blah blah blah, and therefore I will now blah blah blah, and I bet you never thought of this, blah blah blah blah frigging blah BLAH!" They make Blofeld look tongue-tied! It never ends! My eeeeaaaaaaarsssss!!!!! You know, hard men don't talk incessantly. Sort of a rule of thumb that you might pick up if you watch a Sergio Leone movie. (Bet Rodriguez has never watched a spaghetti western...) Oh well, anyway. Some of it looks cool, although I can't quite figure out if it actually looks cool, or if it's just me going, "hey! that's looks exactly like the comic!" It's not really the same thing. I'm glad they had the "-Haven't seen you around in a while. -I had to kill some cops"-frame, although they softened up the dialog. Go figure.
Mickey Rourke's talk over is the only one that works, mostly because his voice is so messed up you can't really tell if he's wincing or not. Owen's is a close second, and that's just because parts of his... part, works really good as comedy. I think it was even meant as comedy. Bruce Willis is so not pulling this off. You can tell he's got nothing but grapes on his mind when he reads the first part of the voice-over. I guess he's been in enough movies to recognize cheese when he sees it, even if he's no big thinker (and never claimed to be, hey, I like the guy).
Every now and then I get an "art movie" vibe. Then I quickly realize that it's because periodically, it's boring like an art movie. I really have liked the Owen part best so far, it had some funny bits and pieces.
All in all, I don't hate the movie. I can sort of chuckle along with Miller and Rodriguez frequently enough to make it worth the watch, and that's more than I can say for most films I see. But you know something? I watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes Chain of Command I and II yesterday, and in that episode of a weekly TV series for young adults, during a few scenes where Picard is tortured by the "Cardassians," there is better acting, more plot, more substance, and more actual characters, than this movie has produced in toto. And that, at the end of the day, gotta mean something.