Seldom so impressed by a movie

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2005)

Had to watch it twice. I felt compelled, magnetized, mesmerized. Never happened to me before. I only watched it to cool off one of the hottest nights in a long summer - and got my nightmare without sleeping.
Is it technology? The movie is fully digital - and it shows in the amazing things it allows Rodriguez to do with dark Black and White and with colour details.
Or is it the stories? Told in a contorted series of intertwining situations, characters and places that uncover details of each character as you watch - not unlike Tarantino's own Pulp Fiction - the apprentice besting the master.
Or is it the action? Hyper-violent, over-the-top, splatter-prone, yet credible in its unfolding and never unwarranted.
Is it the actors? Many among them turning in memorable performances, sometimes their best ever, including a totally unrecognizable Mickey Rourke who meets the end he was promised in Angel Heart, with a great visual twist.
Or maybe the blood? It turns out White, Red and even Yellow streams, but it is unmistakeably it.
Or possibly the mixture of reality and (pulp) comic strip fiction? Indeed this does to noir cartoons what Pulp Fiction did to pulp fiction: a new cinema translation that will leave a mark on cinema stories and how they are told.
No. Of all the surprising features in the movie, I loved one most: an inordinate amount of extremely subtle yet all-encompassing movie quotations in the actual quotes, situations, setups, scenes, choice of actors in reference to their previous career roles, and, may I add, biographies. For example, take Rutger Hauer's rendering of Cardinal Roark's demise: isn't it a fantastic retribution for what he did as a replicant to his own creator in Blade Runner? This movie is a stunning mind-work of thousands of details merging into an epic story. Congratulations, Senor Rodriguez! What a sick imagination, Mr. Miller!