Overly violent, sexist garbage.

Rating: 1/10 (1 April 2005)

I have not read Frank Miller's comic books that this was based off of (though I was told this was a pretty faithful rendition and he codirected) so these comments are only about the movie (though they may apply to the comics as well).
Let me just get the positive comments out of the way. I liked the style of the movie. The black and white with just touches of colors was very nice. The old film noir style feel, with the old cars, the cheesy dialogue, the references to "broads" and "dames" was all pleasing. Even as I found the constant violence off-putting I was still able to appreciate small touches, like the fact that the blood ran white.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is crap. I was just dying to get out of there, so it seemed endlessly long. I should have known there were going to be problems when I saw Robert Rodriguez (having unfortunately suffered through Dusk to Dawn) and Quentin Tarantino (who I feel is a derivative hack) in the credits. Both seem to like to show excessive violence just for shock value. (Don't get me wrong, I don't have an automatic aversion to violence, I like John Woo films - i just don't like the lingering shots of needless/gory violence.)
IMO, the film has three MAJOR flaws, all dealing with the idea of gender. The flaw is that the film is misogynistic - women are nothing but sexual objects and victims. The second (relating to the first) is it's portrayal of men as the rescuers of women. Third, the portrayal of a girl/old man "love" story.
***Spoilers start here***
First problem: Every woman in the film was a whore, a stripper or a woman of loose morals. Even when the men worshiped them as "angels" it was always merely for their physical appearances. And yes, the men weren't all that great themselves, but there was still a wider ranger of character than just sexual object. Furthermore, the women were constantly naked or nearly naked. Even the social worker had to be shown naked. Once again, I don't mind nudity, if it fits the story, if it's tastefully done and if it's both sexes. However in this case, it seemed to be there just because the directors liked to show female T&A whenever possible. There was no male nudity (of course).
Secondly, most of the men in the film (all the main characters) seemed to operate on the assumption that they were rescuing women. Women were helpless (sexual) objects that had to be rescued from serial killers, serial rapists, abusers, pimps, etc. Needless to say there was a disturbing amount of violence against women shown. Even when the film pretended to make a nod towards "empowered women"- they still failed and had to be rescued. For example, the stripper girl needed a 68 year old man to help her; an entire town of armed whores still needed one man to save them; and delusional psychopath goes on a killing rampage to avenge his "love" after a one night stand with a hooker.
Which brings me to the third problem, the incredibly disgusting relationship between the 19 year old and the 68 year old. Now, Harold & Maude is one of my favorite movies, so even though the age difference is disgusting to me, clearly I can overcome that natural revulsion when presented with the right couple/circumstances. Apart from the usual grossness of old men preying on young women, the whole relationship was disturbing. We have a 60 year old cop save an 11 year old girl from rape and gruesome torturous death. The cop is abandoned by everyone, goes to jail and only the girl stays true to him. He clings to her image of innocence and makes her into some sort of ideal image to obsess over. When he is released 8 years later, he goes to find her and make sure she is OK. Where it becomes truly disturbed is when he finds out that she is now a sexy stripper and they decide they are in love. This is a highly inappropriate and sick relationship. She's 19, he's 68. They know nothing of each other (or we can at least presume he thinks he knows her because she wrote him letters - but she knows nothing about him). Shis is clearly suffering from hero worship because he rescued her. He's clearly focused on her as the one last good thing he's done and loves the idea of her as a little girl/and then later as a sexy stripper. It was so revolting I wanted to puke in the theater.
...and they wonder why women comprise a smaller percentage of comic book readers.... maybe if they stopped putting out this kind of sexist crap, we could get into it more. Until then I will continue to avoid this kind of crap and focus on graphic novels that provide *clothed* characters that are not 1 dimensional with a strong plot that does not rely merely on the shock value of graphic violence.
I suggest you avoid this movie and do not pay money to reinforce the notion that these are the kind of comic adaptations we want to see.
There are WAY better noir films out there, fairly good comic book adaptation; WAY better violent films and tons of other T&A movies to watch instead!