Little boys with big cameras

Rating: 2/10 (7 April 2005)

Although I respectfully agree that the film makers have brought a graphic novel to the screen with great respect and panache, I left this movie sickened and infuriated. Not only was this an exercise in futile idolatry, but I felt I was watching the work of male filmmakers who had directed with a camera in one hand while the other was vigorously stroking below the belt.
Not a reader of Miller's graphic novels, I found nothing to engage me in this cinematic world--no characters, no themes, no story, not even an aesthetic (after ten minutes, the movie's look frankly lost its sheen; I needed more). Why make a slavish photocopy of the books when the film makers had an opportunity to translate this material into something that truly lived in the cinematic genre? And also, in this day and age, why hew to the stereotype of women so simultaneously nasty and beautiful that they have to be degraded and/or killed? To the men who made this movie and to the men out there who liked this movie, grow up!