There are better ways to spend your evening

Rating: Null/10 (7 April 2005)

First of all, I have never read any of Frank Miller's stuff, but I knew exactly what I was going in for when I bought the ticket. I knew it was going to be gory and sadistic. My problem wasn't even with the violence (not that I liked it; if you are honestly ENTERTAINED by seeing a guy getting his limbs sawn off and eaten by a dog, you have problems, my friend). And for the record, there were parts I liked. Mickey Rourke's character was awesome beyond words, and each of the three main stories had its moments (the dominatrix women of Old Town, the Bruce Willis hanging scene, etc.). But for some reason, I just couldn't enjoy it. It felt like there was something missing. In fact, the whole thing seemed mediocre.
I guess the missing ingredient, now that I think about it, was Camp with a capital C. This type of relentless gore is usually done either to make you laugh or to make you throw up, but here it is apparently done to impress, and that just doesn't work. Seeing a guy's head still being alive after getting decapitated is very silly in a "Re-Animator" sort of way, but here it is done with a weird solemnity that I guess is supposed to shock or get a "wow, cool" reaction out of the audience. They should have played up the silliness factor (or just gone all out and turned it into full-blown exploitation, in which case I wouldn't have gone). There were touches of campiness, cheesiness, and silliness (especially in the badass narration), but NOT ENOUGH for a movie like this. It's just a lot of gritty violence that gets VERY repetitive after awhile (along with the visuals--yes, they're cool, but the blotches of color were making my head spin).
It's not over-the-top enough to be exploitation, it's not campy enough to be "Evil Dead 2," it's not self-parodying enough to be "Commando," and it's not even fun enough to be "Kill Bill." In the end, it doesn't go far enough in any direction to really be much of anything. It's really just two hours of sadism.
And finally, let me say the one thing that was on my mind the entire time: if Basin City is such a hellhole, how come it never occurs to the characters to just hop in a car and LEAVE? Why not go live in Iowa or someplace? If they're too stupid to leave the damn city, maybe they deserve the swords in the eyeballs.