The closest you'll ever get to have a movie look like the original comic book

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 2005)

That's right. Had it not been made to look so much like a comic book on screen, a lot of the ultra violence will become almost impalatable (no pun intended), such as the nice little guy Kevin (Elijah Wood) who makes Hannibal look like boy scout. A lot of that comic book look comes from the essentially blank and white filming, mixed surreally with partial colouring of mostly red and yellow. The black-and-white however does a lot more than creating a comic book look. It creates startling beauty, particularly with the deliberate contrast of light and shade. The feeling is at once both retro and contemporary.
The movie consists of three separate stories, loosely linked in the Amores Perros circular fashion, just for the fun of it. What initially grabbed my attention is the opening credit, with the actors' names appearing in alphabetically order (with Willis and Wood coming last). I like it, the resemblance of a theatre ensemble in which everybody is treated equally (at least theoretically) and you're not a star just because you happen to be given a key role in the current production. Still, for each story, you can identify the three key roles: the hero, the heroine and the villain. Yes, they all pitch the hero against the villain, rescuing a damsel in stress on the way.
The first story, with half of it shown at the beginning and the other half the end, has Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba and Nick Stahl. Willis plays an aging cop Hartigan rescuing an 11-year-old girl Nancy from sex pervert and senator's son played by Stahl. Eight years later, he rescues her again from Stahl's character that has become the yellow bastard. Things to watch for here are the spirit of the undauntable good old western sheriff (Gary Cooper?), the young girl's (at 19) crush for the aging cop who saved her and the grotesquely exaggerated villain.
The second story has Mickey Rourke, Jaime King and Elijah Wood. Rourke plays a tough guy, looking almost like "Jaws", sworn to avenge the murder of a hooker Goldie (King) who somehow captured his tender heart in one fling. Of course, King wouldn't be wasted and comes back to play Goldie's twin sister Wendy. Not quite the chief villain but rather his tool, Elijah Woods plays a psychopath killer that, as I said, makes Hannibal look like boy scout. This is the most violent of the three stories.
The final story has Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson and Michael Clarke Duncan. This is simply a story of all out warfare between a gang of militant prostitutes lead by Gail (Dawson), with the help of old lover Dwight (Owen), against corrupted cops. While Duncan plays the villain, it's Benicio Del Toro who steals the show, playing under-cover cop Jackie Boy, whose untimely death means the removal of the effective buffer between the two forces. As the dead body of Jackie Boy, Del Toro continues to act, beautifully, in the only sequence in this movie that is directed by Tarantino as the "guest director".
There are other fun characters aplenty, such as Japanese sword wielding Miho (Devon Aoki), who might have come directly from Kill Bill. All told, it's a fun movie  great visuals, exciting action, weird humour and, if nothing else, it's such a pleasure watching the bad guys beaten to pulp.