An illustration of where we are...

Rating: 1/10 (13 November 2005)

I own Pulp Fiction, Mad Max and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and was looking forward to this, given the talent behind it.
Stylistically the movie captures the comic-book feel amazingly well. The quality is impeccable, and it moves at a good rate.... However...
Both my wife and I got progressively more uncomfortable as the film went on. The violence slowly got more and more sadistic and graphic, and seemed to be a celebration of torture, mutilation and pain.
Women were reduced to their component parts, and tokenistic "sassiness" given to their characters to disguise the fact they were pure eye-candy for the male element of the audience.
We didn't care about the characters. There were no differences. The 'hero' liked to dismember villains, and get dogs to eat them whilst still alive. I'm not sure why this was OK, or any different to what the villains were doing.
What was this movie about? 2 hours of what could be the greatest guide ever for serial killers to keep their interest piqued? I think the purpose of this movie was to make us realise the world we live in. If you step back from the stylish production, and the white comic book blood, the content and message is very cold and dehumanising.
Neither my wife or I finished watching the film, and both felt angry that we had wasted as much time as we did watching someone else's nasty fantasy.
The only thing that disturbed me more than the film was the fact that people I like recommended it to me with no mention of the violence. Are we really that numb?