Definitely the most spectacular movie I’ve seen in a long time. It’s film noir at it’s best. It’s the technique that Sky Captain introduced perfected. It’s a comic book movie at it’s best. It’s beautiful. The phenomenal ensemble cast probably won’t garner any Academy Awards (just as Lords of the Rings didn’t (although Elijah Wood once again tosses his hat into an ensemble cast with amazing aplomb)), but hey…I wouldn’t use the word phenomenal once (let alone twice) if I didn’t mean it here. The cast is absolutely perfect and they deliver all of Frank Miller’s incredible dialogue with all of Robert Rodriguez’s (not to mention Miller’s and Quentin Tarantino’s) direction to perfection. They all look like the comic book characters…they all sound like the characters ought to sound…they all kill people like the characters ought to kill people…it’s just perfect. And talk about ultra-violent! It was incredible! I loved every gory minute of it!
The story flows wonderfully (although some people (including myself for that matter) get even a little lost without careful analyzation and some answered questions. But hey! That’s what happens when you write an anthology story…which I’m damn glad they did by the way. The movie script is adapted from Volume’s 1, 3 and 4 (The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard) of Miller’s comic. Toss in some continuity written by the original author (IIEE!! I’m still geeking out about that!) and the introduction section (The Customer Is Always Right) and you have one hell of a beautiful story.
Originally, Miller didn’t want ANYONE doing a movie based on his baby (not only did he write the original comic books, he owns the copyright on it). But Rodriguez convinced him by filming the opening sequence to the movie and applying the digital effects right there. Miller loved it so much, he not only wrote the aforementioned additional material, he even performs a cameo in the film as a dead priest (you’ll understand the dead part pretty quickly). But that’s giving too much away, so I’ll just stop before I become as useless as a palsy victim doing brain surgery with a pipe-wrench. See the great thing is, that’s a quote from Miller’s comics…and from the movie…God, I love good adaptations…