The "Waking Life" of violence, if "Waking Life" was good....

Rating: 10/10 (15 August 2005)

Incredible performances from an ensemble cast. Mickey Rourke in the role of a life time. Completely inspired casting in even the smallest of roles, Rutger Hauer as Bishop Roark, Powers Boothe as Senator Roark, Michael Madsen as Bruce Willis's partner, and good god almighty you always knew Elijah Wood was creepy but you didn't know why you felt that way. Well here's your answer. The first actual comic book film in the way that it actually does an unbelievable job of combining film and art, not art like "but is it art?" talking drawings. An amazing portrayal of gender roles, women as in need or psychotic amazons, men as scumbags or noble scumbags. And let's not forget guest director's Quentin Tarantino's contribution which I will allude to but not reference directly to give you the challenge of picking it out yourself. Frank Miller's most successful foray into film (lets please forget Robocop 2 and 3) and Robert Rodriguez's opus. Groundbreaking, visually stunning, consistently good use of cgi, not over use like most Hollywood pictures today. Kick back, enjoy the holy hell out of it.