DATELINE, SCOTT ADKINS’ TWITTER ACCOUNT: The UNDISPUTED 2-3 star reports, “For those asking Undisputed 4 is coming.” He doesn’t elaborate except to answer a fan’s question of whether or not Michael Jai White will be in it (he won’t). Adkins has alot of movies in the can and coming up but the one he seems most excited about is the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER which he has said “will blow ur mind.”

PARKER UPDATE

Jason Statham was on a web-exclusive episode of The Treatment podcast with Elvis Mitchell, talking about THE KILLER ELITE, and he said something I had never heard reported about the PARKER movie: “It’s funny, we talk about ’70s movies, the original script that we were talking about doing was written 30 years ago, so it was like, do we want to make it a period piece or do we want to modernize it and make it up to date? So we discussed that and Taylor was right in making a modern version of it, I feel.”

On IMDb the script is credited to John J. McLaughlin, writer of BLACK SWAN, so either they heavily rewrote it or he’s saying they had a different Parker script they considered but made an all new one. Whatever he means it brings up the question of what the 30 year old script is that he’s talking about, and I have a theory. This would be more than 30 years old, but Brian Garfield (author of the novel Death Wish and friend of Donald Westlake) wrote an adaptation of Butcher’s Moon for Charles Bronson and Michael Winner to do (discussed in this interview). That was while the duo were filming DEATH WISH, which neither Garfield or Westlake ended up thinking was well directed, so Bronson and Winner ended up leaving and it never happened. Too bad, Bronson would’ve been a better Parker than most.

Anyway, as far as PARKER, some of the character names on IMDb seem to match up with a later Parker novel, Flashfire, so the prevailing theory is that it’s loosely based on that one.

LAST STAND UPDATE

I’m happy to read that Schwarzenegger has actually begun filming that movie with the great Kim Jee-Woon (I SAW THE DEVIL). So it’s actually gonna happen, looks like. Good choice. The cast includes Ghost Dog (GHOST DOG), Harry Dean Stanton (COCKFIGHTER) and Luis Guzman (THE LIMEY). And Johnny Knoxville and Peter Stormare.

CARLA GUGINO ON JUSTIFIED

Did any of you fellas watch that show Karen Sisco when it was on back in ‘03? That was a show I really dug based on the federal marshal character from Elmore Leonard’s Out of Sight, played by Jennifer Lopez in the movie. I love that movie and wasn’t sure about accepting another actress as Karen, but Carla Gugino was so good she replaced J-Lo in my mind as the character.

Like Justified the show did a good job of capturing Leonard’s tone, with a charismatic lead, imperfect heroes, a sense of humor and interesting guest-criminals that sometimes became the focus of the episodes. The same director, Michael Dinner, did the pilots for both shows. Although critics loved it Karen Sisco only lasted 10 episodes and for some fuckin reason has never made it to DVD.

Well, that hasn’t changed, but Gugino’s gonna be on Justified in season 3.

The article on tvline.com that broke the news says she plays “Karen Goodall, a Washington, D.C.-based assistant director of the U.S. Marshals Service who used to work with Raylan back in Miami — and as such shares a history with our favorite trigger-happy lawman. Goodall, who is twice-divorced and described as ‘tough, smart and funny,’ comes to Kentucky to help safeguard hidden witnesses who have become vulnerable after the murder of a U.S. Marshal.”

Is that sort of a re-named Karen Sisco, due to rights issues or some shit? I don’t remember Sisco having any ex-husbands, but I guess it’s been a while since we’ve seen her. She was a federal marshal working in Miami and I don’t think they’d give her the same first name if they didn’t want us to think that. I guess if Robert Forster shows up as her dad we’ll know for sure.

Also if you missed it Neal McDonough (STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN LI) and Mykelti Williamson (MIRACLE MILE) have signed on to play villains this season. And last season’s villain won an Emmy.

In related news, Leonard’s new novel is about (and called) Raylan, and comes out January 31st.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS

The LA Times is reporting that Justin Lin will film THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS parts 6 and 7 back-to-back next year and that they might connect into one large story. You know, like RED CLIFF, but with fast cars and big neck muscles instead of Chinese history and CGI arrows. In my opinion, ten years ago I would not have guessed that there would be six sequels to that movie and that two would be a 4-hour Furious Epic and that The Rock would be in them and that it would be really exciting.

How the fuck you make a 4-hour street racing heist movie I do not know, but they do have a big enough ensemble now I guess. And I hope Letty teaches Han how to fake his death at the beginning so we can bring Lucas Black into it.

Oh yeah, and there are rumors that Jason Statham will be in them too, but I don’t think that’s been confirmed at all.

DIE HARD 5.0 BETA

In anybody missed it, they’re calling the new DIE HARD picture A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD. I’m not really for or against it. It would work best if it’s supposed to be the last John McClane adventure.

I would like to be excited for this. Unfortunately, when you’re dealing with the director of MAX PAYNE and the writer of HITMAN you sort of have to lower your expectations. I assumed they would bring on another writer because I mean come on, the best thing he’s done was THE A-TEAM. I have a hard time imagining he came up with a good way to approach a difficult task. But I hope I’m wrong.

DETECTIVE JOHN TAKEN vs. WOLVES

Speaking of THE A-TEAM, director Joe Carnahan has a new one coming out in January called THE GREY, and the trailer came out a while ago so I meant to post it. Liam Neeson and friends are oil drillers who crash their plane in Alaska and have to fight a bunch of wolves or something. Personally I’ve found all of Carnahan’s movies to be mixed bags (yeah, even NARC, but it was pretty good) but this one does sound potentially good.

DJANGO UNCHAINED CASTING UPDATE

Tarantino’s slavery spaghetti western or whatever continues casting. Jamie Foxx is still the title character, trained in bounty hunting by Christoph Waltz. Leonardo DiCaprio is the villain, with Samuel L. Jackson working for him. Kevin Costner unfortunately had a scheduling conflict so he cannot play a slavedriver fight trainer, and has been replaced with Kurt Russell. Of course I generally prefer Russell, but I loved the idea of Costner playing a slimy racist asshole. Michael Kenneth Williams from some TV show has said that Tarantino wrote a role for him. Don Johnson has just been added, which is cool although Robert Rodriguez beat him to it by having him in MACHETE. Maybe Seagal is next.

HERE IS A DRAWING OF CLINT EASTWOOD BY THE LEGENDARY WRESTLER JERRY LAWLER

Here is a drawing of Clint Eastwood by the legendary wrestler Jerry Lawler

A COUPLE OF EXPENDABLES 2 PICTURES

Some Expendablistic behind-the-scenes photos have been posted on Twitter by the various actors. Scott Adkins posted one of him in costume as “Hector”:

He reminds me of a guy that would be in MORTAL KOMBAT, or one of those background evil mutant characters from BRETT RATNER’S X-MEN 3, and I mean that as a compliment. A good super villain type of look. For some reason I have a feeling this is gonna be the movie that breaks him through to the next level of action movie success, but I guess that depends on what they give him to do and whether or not they manage to get him in frame when he’s doing it. Which might be unlikely from director Simon West.

And you probly saw this one:

I know it’s foolish to get my hopes up for this movie, but I gotta admit that picture is pulling me in. Yeah, they were in that scene in the first one that I couldn’t hear because the people in the theater wouldn’t shut up, and I couldn’t tell if they actually shot it together because they rarely showed them in one shot. But this makes you hope for something better.

I love how they’re all wearing a different form of action movie adventure gear. Stallone’s got his Expendables uniform, complete with Action Wristwatch and cowboy-style side holsters. Bruce has more of a worldly mercenary look because of the scarf. I don’t think that’s an Ashton Kutcher Hollywood Douchebag Scarf, I think it’s more of an I’ve Been To the Middle East one. And is that a gun on his left side or a glove? I think it’s a glove. All the better to choke you with. Then of course Schwarzenegger has the ’80s Cop Who Plays By His Own Rules look with the Hawaiian shirt with trenchcoat (not pictured: cigar). It’s a look that says I don’t give a fuck about camouflage. No seriously guys, I really really don’t give a fuck. It’s a Hawaiian shirt, fer chrissakes.

And the planes in the background make me think they’re about to fly out to a jungle together and have a violent adventure. We’ll see I guess.

In my opinion some movies present an unrealistic body image for men to live up to

FASTER starts out with The Rock just itching for some revenge. It’s the last day of a ten year bid for armed robbery and he’s anxious to get started, pacing frantically in his cell. When they let him out he storms through the gate, takes a look at the desert, and just starts running. After an unspecified amount of travel he arrives at the badass Chevelle that has been prepared for him, stocked with a gun, ammo, leather jacket, hit list and driving instructions (the convenience of GoogleMaps is something that hasn’t been properly addressed in a revenge movie before).

He doesn’t take time to find a girl or eat a steak, he goes straight to some guy’s office, storms past the receptionist, straight to his cubicle and shoots him in the forehead. Doesn’t even slow down to say anything about “This is for betraying us after the robbery and killing my brother.”

Directed by George Tillman, Jr. (NOTORIOUS [not the one by Hitchcock, the one by George Tillman Jr.]), the movie shows the obvious influence of POINT BLANK, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, and KILL BILL. But not in the sense of being a bunch of references (other than a Morricone ringtone). I like that it takes it all seriously, it’s not a bunch of smart alecky shit.

The Rock’s character is just called “DRIVER.” We learn the backstory and some of his relationships as he goes on his killing spree and meets with people, but it’s a pretty minimalistic character, low on words and quirks. The story alternates between him and two other lead characters: Billy Bob Thornton as “COP” and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as “KILLER.”

It’s also a very visual movie, especially in the way it establishes this Killer guy. The camera pans across his wall of photos as he does an impossibly difficult yoga workout (he later tells his girlfriend, the daughter from TAKEN, that he “beat yoga.”) From the photos we learn that he was some kind of young investment hotshot, he climbs mountains, he was a kickboxer (sadly another unfulfilled promise of climactic martial arts duel – somebody’s gotta teach some action movie manners to these modern filmatists).

Killer is like a less creepy Patrick Bateman. He lives in a mansion, drives a Ferrari, is impossibly toned, has a pretty girlfriend who spends her time lounging by their pool. And he’s all the more hatable because he’s not as evil or sadistic as you’d think. He’s just an overachiever that likes a good challenge. And of course that’s what he gets when somebody hires him to kill this Driver. It’s gonna be difficult.

Cop is actually the most interesting character. He’s introduced making a desperate drug buy in a restroom before we see his badge. I expected an over-the-top sleazy dirty cop villain. Obviously Billy Bob could go to town on a role like that. But after we see he’s a junkie and a fuckup and hated by the other cops including chief-expositionist Carla Gugino (who can explain the plot to me any time, in my opinion) we see him in his fucked up home life. You know the drill: he’s late picking up his son, his ex bitches at him, then while he’s driving his son to the baseball game he’s right in the middle of making some promise and gets a call about another shooting he has to investigate immediately…

…but he decides his son is more important, goes to the game and shows up at the crime scene two hours late! No shit! So after that, no matter what he did, I still kind of liked him. ‘Cause he went to the baseball game.

That’s the clever thing about the movie. It starts out with these exaggerated, larger than life archetype-type characters, but as it goes on we realize they aren’t really good guys and bad guys. Actually they’re all bad, but with a soft spot.

Driver is the most cartoonish. The Rock looks pumped-up to wrestler size again. Honestly I think his muscles are too big for this one. It’s kind of hard to take him seriously, he’s such a monster. I mean, what guy looks like that and then his specialty is driving? I got a hunch he would be better at other things. It’s to the point where it could be a detriment ’cause he’s gonna have a hard time fitting in the car. His arms are gonna bump against the inside of the door and mess up his steering.

And while I appreciate his fearlessness, killing in front of witnesses and staring straight into the security camera, I feel like there’s gotta be some serious incompetence in the police force for him to be getting away with all this for so long. How the fuck are they not finding a giant muscleman who’s making no effort to hide himself, who’s wearing a sleeveless shirt to show his huge, distinctive tattoos, and is driving a badass early ’70s Chevelle with a show-offy racing stripe? In my opinion this should be an easy suspect to locate.

In a flashback we learn that Driver wasn’t always a killing machine, or even a getaway driver. His brother was the criminal, he only went on the job to help him out because his brother was in debt to some dangerous people. (And by the way, hat’s off to this guy Matt Gerald for being able to play The Rock’s big brother.) The flashback is a little goofy because Rock has to act scared to show his earlier innocence, but he looks like he could kill most of these guys just by banging their heads against his biceps. Also because in the post-robbery chase scene he’s mostly driving in reverse. I didn’t really understand why unless it was his audition for the FAST AND FURIOUS movie.

But there are lots of subtle things that make this movie better than I expected. Usually in a movie like this everybody would be hostile to him until he humiliated them. He’d have to show them who’s boss. Think of the scene in PAYBACK where Porter’s trying to get past security to talk to Stegman and this huge dude looks like he’s gonna crush him, but then it cuts to the embarrassed thug walking into the other room with blood dripping down the side of his head. In FASTER he goes to a strip club to kill a guy, nobody knows he’s trouble. The bouncers are nice to him, they joke around with him like he’s their buddy.

Inside the club he ends up with a duel in the restroom, and his opponent tells Joe, the elderly bathroom attendant, to go outside and guard the door. And to not tell anybody what happened here. I love that type of shit.

It doesn’t seem like any type of a Tarantino rip-off, but I bet it was KILL BILL that inspired some of this circle-of-vengeance-melodrama, like the one guy’s son swearing revenge on Driver for getting revenge on his dad, and the multiple characters who seem to welcome their deaths as inevitable justice sort of like Budd did (”That woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die.”) But I don’t mind if that’s where they got it from. It’s good shit.

The one artistic choice that seems a little cheap to me is the Cop’s slow-motion walk set to “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. It’s a great song but come on man, THE BIG LEBOWSKI owns that one. You can’t use that anymore. Again, you gotta learn your manners.

I enjoyed this movie, and it’s exciting to see The Rock in an R-rated action movie. But to be honest this is not the best role for him at this point, it seems more like an early-in-the-career character before he had proven himself as an actor. I mean he’s pretty much playing a Terminator. When I first saw The Rock in THE RUNDOWN I thought holy shit, this guy is a cartoon superhuman but he’s completely charming. This one just stays at cartoon superhuman, no charisma necessary. He can do that, but it’s not what makes him a great action hero. It’s missing one of his dimensions. There are any number of wrestlers that could’ve done this role pretty much the same.

Also, this is weird but it’s not much of a driving movie. I’m not sure why it’s called FASTER. He does drive from destination to destination, but most of the action is on foot, with guns and a little bit of the 52 style close-quarters combat.

Despite these misgivings I think FASTER is a solid modern action movie with an admirable balance of respecting-the-classics and putting-a-new-spin-on-it. Admittedly I had low expectations based on what people told me about it, but it was better than I expected.

We never did find out what happened with the kid’s baseball team though.

VERN HAS SEEN THE WATCHMEN DVD

(that came out last week)

My fellow Watchmaniacs: People like me and you, being huge comics book “geeks” and true fans for life, we could tell each other exactly where we were the first time we saw those historic Watchman comic strips in 1986, when they exploded onto the scene just like the explosion that happens at the end that Doctor Manhattan was blamed for or whatever it was that happened at the end. I remember LA Law had just debuted on TV, and Pinochet had escaped assassination in Chile. CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD was capturing the national consciousness. I was wearing an anti-Khadafi novelty t-shirt, listening to Falco on my Walkman tape and solving a Rubik’s cube when my eyes first fell upon its graphic novel cover at the graphic novel stand. And remember you were there too and we looked at each other like “uh huh” and we nodded because after seeing all those adventures that the Watchmen were having and everything, you knew this was history, this was the motherfuckin Hindenburg exploding into the moon on top of JFK’s motorcade. In cartoon terms it was Josie and the Pussycats arriving in the U.S., or Elvis Pres-stone from the waist up on Ed Sullirock. It was Garfield eating lasagna for the first time on the Motown 25th, that was the kind of impact it had. It was a major sea change, you could feel it in your blood, taste it in your bones. The Archie Comics building would be burned to the ground, its artists and writers hunted down like Nazis in South America. Batman would be over. Superman would be dead. X-Men would be forgotten. Ziggy would be slightly less popular although still generally respected. Watchmen proved once and for all that comics drawings and children’s super hero adventures had grown up. Because there’s a rape scene. But also because Watchmen is sophisticated storytelling for adults, with adult ideas, an adult point of view. And we appreciate that so much that 28 years later we’ll buy all the action figures, dolls and lunch pails.

Nah, don’t be mad fellas, you know I’m just jerkin your chains. No disrespect intended. I love you all and honor your nerd heritage. But I read some of the reviews when this movie came out and they all started with 6 paragraphs of origin story explaining the same crap about how early they read the comic, how many times they read it, how it changed comics and their lives forever, and Time Magazine chose it as one of the top 100 novels of all time. (Interesting, because Time Magazine also chose my book Seagalogy as one of David Cross’s 5 things that he writes blurbs about.) I don’t know why we always gotta go into our background and our bonafides when we review certain movies, but oh well. Their main point cannot be denied: the influence of Alan Moore’s Watchmen could never be blah blah blah etc. etc.

The WATCHMEN movie was examined cell-by-cell with a laser microscope on every other movie websight starting weeks before it came out (if not years), which is why I didn’t review it before – I didn’t know what to add. But I’ve gotten more requests to review this than practically any movie in my ten years of writing, and I aim to please. So if this review sucks it means I’m pandering. Sorry.

I probaly don’t gotta explain what WATCHMEN is, but I already wrote it up so it’s too late to stop me. WATCHMEN is an epic ensemble super hero movie. It takes place in an alternate 1985 where an American scientist was given super powers (and blue skin) in a lab accident. He was so powerful he won the Vietnam War, making Nixon so popular he’s still president. All the other super heroes have no powers, they’re weirdo vigilantes in costumes who know how to fight. But they’ve been outlawed (I’m not totally clear why). Everything is kind of different in this alternate history – super heroes are the biggest celebrities in the world, gangs have samurai hair cuts, Lee Iaccoca gets his head blown off. But some things are the same, for example the Cold War still exists, as does the song “99 Luft Balloons.”

The best part of the movie is the first 10 or 20 minutes. A gruff old man is attacked in his penthouse apartment and tossed through the window. The police are suspicious but it’s the masked vigilante who snoops around a little later that finds the secret compartment where the deceased keeps his super hero costume. It’s kind of like how you might worry that if you die your loved ones will find your porn stash, well this is kind of that way, you kick the bucket and then everybody’s gonna know you were the right wing super hero and CIA assassin known as The Comedian. Not the type of guy that a random burglar would be able to off, so it looks like somebody’s going after super heroes.

From here we go into an incredible opening credits montage where we seem to float through photos and footage showing this alternate history: the goofy early days of costumed super heroes punching out gimmicky villains, blue Dr. Manhattan in a suit shaking hands with JFK, the Comedian on the grassy knoll assassinating JFK. My favorite is a female super hero coming home from World War II, then grabbing a nurse and giving her a kiss. Don’t feel too empowered though because I think that same heroine and her lover are the ones murdered in a hate crime. You see the crime scene and they do such a good job of creating this world that it feels like an infamous tragedy you already knew about, like the Helter Skelter murders or something. And all this is set to “The Times They Are A Changing.”

The best character in the movie (and sort of the protagonist) is Rorschach, the one super hero who continues to operate illegally. He wears a fedora, trenchcoat and mask that’s an always changing rorschach blot. So if you’re fucked up you’re gonna see some fucked up shit when you look at his face. Rorschach seems to be a statement that to really be a masked vigilante you’d have to be a complete lunatic. He rants like Travis Bickle about liberals, whores and scum. His Bruce Wayne type alter ego is not a billionaire playboy, he’s a homeless street prophet. But you still kind of like him. His strength is complete dedication – he always brags that he never compromises. Also he’s a dirty street fighter, he owns a grappling hook gun and he knows a few parkour moves. So he’s as good as anybody to investigate why somebody is killing super heroes.

Rorschach’s former partner and sort of friend is Nite Owl, a rich gadget user like Batman. He wasn’t driven by family tragedy like Batman though, he’s basically a huge nerd who did it for fun and without it his life is empty. Then circumstances cause him and a gal called Silk Spectre to suit up and be super heroes again, and it’s kind of portrayed as a fetish. He actually can’t get it up until they have had the costumes on.

The other most memorable character is Dr. Manhattan, an animated muscular naked blue man controlled and distantly voiced by Billy Crudup. He can see the past and future at the same time, turn himself giant, split himself into separate bodies, cause people to explode. I guess he’s the opposite of Superman because instead of an alien who cares about humanity he’s a human who doesn’t. With his God-like perspective of the universe he ends up having all the warmth and charisma of HAL 9000. Appearing on a talk show he’s accused of causing cancer and defends himself by saying that living and dead bodies have the same number of cells. Not the best defense, in my opinion, or at least not the most endearing one.

The movie is long – about 3 hours in the director’s cut – and structured like a novel in that it will have sections that focus on one character or set of characters without worry about going back to the others until much later. For example, when Dr. Manhattan has a breakdown he doesn’t go to Reno to gamble, he goes to Mars to float around in a yoga pose and create flying crystal castles with his mind. This part is set to Philip Glass music. And there is little or no farting jokes in the movie.

That said, it’s not THE LIMITS OF CONTROL either, it’s pretty accessible. There’s some well-staged action here and there, a couple fights (maybe more kung-fu-movie style than some comics enthusiasts wished for) and some genuine badass moments involving Rorschach. My favorite part is when he gets caught and locked up. Under the mask he’s Jackie Earle Haley, that kid from BAD NEWS BEARS and DAMNATION ALLEY. He’s surrounded by criminals he put away, hungry to kill him, but after he dumps frying grease on a guy’s face and grunts, “You people don’t understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!” it’s clear who’s in charge of the situation. He’s Miss Daisy, they’re driving.

The one character I didn’t like was this Ozymandias. He’s the super hero who went public, became a celebrity and multimillionaire businessman. I think Matthew Goode is a good actor, at least in the overlooked THE LOOKOUT. But here he’s pretty bad, overplaying the character’s prissy coldness. By context it seems like the character is supposed to be really charismatic, but he’s not, he’s completely unlikable. He also has the worst costume, looking straight out of BATMAN AND ROBIN. He gets less screen time than the others so you don’t really know what his deal is. This is a major flaw in the telling of the story, which seems to become more cluttered and less confident in the last part. It has the feeling of somebody trying to adapt something that’s too big and complex to fit in a movie.

But when it’s working it’s really working, so I enjoyed it. It’s kind of like watching a guy carry a ten foot tall stack of plates, or Will Smith trying to play Mohammed Ali. You know he’s not gonna pull it off entirely, but you’re impressed by how close he got.

The world of the movie surrounds you, it’s packed with detail, and it’s not one you’ve seen before. It’s not just BLADE RUNNER with super heroes. It’s 1985 New York remixed. And the characters who inhabit the world are interesting. Malin Akerman, the new-model Cameron Diaz who plays Silk Spectre, is occasionally iffy, and Carla (for God’s sake where is KAREN SISCO on DVD?) Gugino sometimes overplays her old lady character. But for the most part the acting is good, which is important because for a movie so full of effects and artifice it really is about the characters.

In my review of 300 I said the verdict was still out on Zack Snyder. I was suspicious that he might be some kind of a lightweight because his movies to that point (300 and DAWN OF THE DEAD remake) were fun but all surface. It seemed kind of odd to me that he could make those movies without seeming to think at all about their subtext.

I’m not sure how much WATCHMEN proves, because the ideas in it from what I understand come directly from the comic. And I don’t want to give him too much credit for just being a literalist. But this does improve my opinion of him, he’s no dummy. To adapt the comic in this way was wise, there would’ve been a million ways to make it more like a normal super hero movie, or update it to 2009, that would’ve been stupid. He did a good job and he’s much closer to earning that “from visionary director of” line that was on the trailer and poster.

I guess the director’s cut on DVD is 24 minutes longer than the theatrical cut. I didn’t notice all of it but I think this is the rare case where he had to cut it down to release in theaters and the longer really is the better cut. These days most of the “uncut” DVDs are a marketing gimmick where they put in stuff they should’ve left out. This one explains the mystery a little better and shows a little more reminiscing of the old days and makes more reason for the old Nite Owl to be in the story. Please note though – there’s been a bunch of hype about the extras, well, that’s the Blu-ray. I just saw the DVD which has no commentary and sorry but I did not enjoy the featurette on there. If I wanted to know how important the comic book was I would re-read the beginning part of this review.

There was some talk about this movie being a failure because it cost a ton of money to make and only made 1.3 tons back, but what the hell did you expect? This is not SPIDER-MAN or IRON MAN. It’s a 2 1/2 hour R-rated movie about super heroes dealing with issues such as “my boyfriend doesn’t understand why it’s bad that he split apart and was working in the lab while having sex with me” and “my mom is acting weird because the guy who tried to rape her died.” The premise is so complex they didn’t try to explain it in the trailers, and I don’t think they even showed you Nixon or any period detail. It’s not the easiest movie to market. To me it’s amazing – in a good way – that this movie even got made, let alone didn’t sink an entire studio. If it made a profit of ten dollars I’m impressed and it was all worth it. It was a good way for a bunch of people to spend several years. It put food on their tables and a unique movie on our screens.

[ratings]

So what Robert Rodriguez did for this comic strip SIN CITY, he actually brought in the writer/cartoonist from the comic, made him co-director, and apparently pretty much used the comic as storyboards and script. He used his cool digital movie cameras and convinced a great cast to come in and fuck around in front of green screens and used computers for almost all the backgrounds. According to my team of expert nerds, there are scenes and lines from the funny pages that they cut out here and there and they mixed things together a little bit at the beginning in order to combine three stories into one. But for the most part the shots are based on the drawings and everything written on the page is said out loud in the movie. An obsessive level of faithfulness never thought possible even by Harry Knowles himself. Maybe the most faithful movie adaptation of anything ever, including plays, novels and trading cards.

So what this is is a very ballsy and ridiculous experiment, like Gus Van Sant’s PSYCHO. Like most experiments in science, it’s a big failure. But you gotta fuck up in order to invent cancer or whatever. I’m glad these guys did it anyway even though it really doesn’t work.

Based on my detailed research beforehand, I was a little skeptical going in, and I think my hunch was right. See, the comic strip is drawn in stark black and white in order to look like film noir. But then the movie is done with high tech digital effects and makeup in order to look like the comic. Not like film noir. You see the problem here? It’s like a snake eating its tail, or I guess probaly a tail shitting out a snake’s head. The whole concept don’t make sense.

And that’s the problem here. It would be the greatest, most fucked up hard boiled film noir of all time, if it just felt like a film noir. But it doesn’t, it feels like a cartoon. It’s like they pulled that movie Dick Tracy into the side of a van and beat it unconscious with a brick. Then they sucked all the color out with a rubber tube, shot it full of PCP, tossed it on the side of the road, then dumped cold water on it and burned rubber. So this fucked up zombie Dick Tracy wakes up all confused and then goes on a rampage. That’s what Sin City is. It’s pretty funny and cool to watch Dick Tracy running around crazy like that, and it makes you think about noir and hard boiled and pulp. But you can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s still stupid Dick Tracy.

Let’s try that in one sentence. Dick Tracy is to Sin City as Nick Nolte is to Nick Nolte mug shot.

The movie is basically three pulp novel stories, each one about a narrating bad motherfucker who gets into some shit. In backwards order you got my man Bruce as Hartigan, a retired cop who saves a little girl from being molested, but gets blamed for it himself, then has to fight some mutated yellow dude. You got Clive Owen as Dwight, a dude with a goofy overcoat who stops Benicio Del Toro from fucking with his girlfriend, a fight that escalates to involve a severed head, the mafia and an army of heavily armed hookers (one of them a ninja). And then you got Mickey Rourke as Marv, a huge, hulking, ugly, schizophrenic lug who wakes up next to a dead hooker (the only woman who was ever nice to him) and knows that getting revenge on the killer will mean his death, and that it will be absolutely worth it.

I really liked all three characters and the actors playing them. They’re all narrating pretty much nonstop, which usually doesn’t work in movies, but works pretty good here. They talk mean as hell and they sound like they mean it. In concept, my favorite is Marv, a fucker so tough (SPOILER IN THIS SENTENCE) he says, “Is that the best you pansies can do?” after a jolt of the ol’ electric chair. But there’s a problem, a real big problem. They want him to look like the drawing in the comic book, so they got Mickey Rourke under all this makeup. He looks like the amazing human Hellboy.

And that’s what I’m trying to say, that’s the whole problem of this movie. I have talked to my nerd research team and I have even gone so far as to browse the comic strips with my own two eyes. And this is what I discovered. When you’re reading those things all you got is drawings, so the drawings become a real world. You’re looking at this drawing of Marv, and that’s Marv, that’s the real guy, in a real world. Even though there’s pictures, it’s like books. You gotta imagine stuff. But when you see the movie, what you see is what you get. And what you get is a dude in cartoony lookin makeup. You don’t think of him as a real guy who looks like that. You think of him as a fuckin muppet. And muppets just aren’t all that gritty.

I liked the stories, although the third one didn’t make alot of sense. My team tells me in the comic book it’s more clear that the girl is in hiding and that’s why Hartigan can find her but the bad guys can’t, and it’s explained how he got out of prison and also I guess the yellow bastard has his dong hangin out the whole time. But I didn’t read the comic, I saw the movie, so I wish it made more sense. Other than that the stories got a good pulp feel with nice details and twists and lots of great tough guy lines, especially in the narration.

And I liked pretty much the whole cast. Other than the three main anti-heroes my favorite was Benicio of the Bull, who talks in a scary gravelly voice but it gets higher when he gets his throat slashed. Britney Murphy’s pretty funny too. The whole crowd laughed at her melodramatic delivery of the line, “Dwight ya fool – ya DAMN FOOL!” Marv got the crowd going too. He got the best lines and the best violence.

If you put it all down on paper you would figure I’d have to love this movie. It’s got revenge and intrigue and mayhem and extreme violence. It’s got people run over by cars, people jumpin through windshields, two different people with their heads dunked in toilets. It’s got hookers, a whole bunch of severed heads, a whole bunch of impalements and cut off hands and trunks full of chopped up bodies. Guns, swords, axes, knives, explosives, bows and arrows, a hungry wolf, some razor wire. It’s got sinking in tar and jumping off ledges and punching into walls and Elijah Wood from the hobbits movies as a mute, cannibal serial killer martial arts expert. Marv’s parole officer is Carla Gugino, Karen Sisco #2 herself, and she spends most of the movie naked. They got corrupt politicians and religious leaders and they even got em played by Powers Boothe and Rutger Hauer. And it’s shot in real nice black and white with some nice select uses of color (a pupil here, some blood there). And it’s got Bruce Willis with a big scar on his head punching a guy until his face is mush. I mean how could this movie not be a god damn masterpiece?

I’ll tell you how, because they treat this comic book shit too literally. And it was brave and it was cool and it usually looks great, but it just doesn’t work as a movie. They got all these striking shadows, they got a jail cell straight out of German expressionism, they got weird white silhouettes and neon white blood but they also got Mickey Rourke and Nick Stahl wearing Dick Tracy makeup, they got all this violence that looks like a cartoon. Body parts chop off like butter and people jump off buildings like Batman and when people get punched you don’t feel like they’re really getting punched. They’re just getting vibrated on a green screen.

They did a good job on the cars. When they’re driving around in cars or standing on a dock, it looks like Sin City is a real place. But most of the rest of the time they look like they’re doing just exactly what they’re really doing, which is standing in front of a computer drawn background. You don’t really buy this as being a real world. Most of the time it seems like they’re performing a play with fancy video effects.

In a real film noir they’d have a set, they’d have a soundstage, it would seem like a real place. A real dark, shadowy black and white place. Sin City is not a place most of the time. It’s a background.

So more than anything I think what they’ve accomplished here is they’ve proven sort of a suspicion I’ve had for a long time but never thought would be proven so scientifically. And that is that you can’t just translate something 100% literally and expect it to work. You gotta recognize that books are books and movies are movies and you gotta be true to what’s good about each one but you can’t expect them to be identical twins. Because if they are they’ll be fucked up identical twins like those pervert gynecologists with the weird tools. What’s gruesome and badass in a drawing might just be silly in a movie. We know that for sure now.

I wish there was a movie exactly like this but not cartoony. It can be over the top and fantastical but as long as it feels REAL. It’s hard to be gritty and grimy when you’re made out of pixels. I think they were trying to make a movie that was much more tough and hardcore and brutal than this ends up being just because it all feels so phoney and cartoony.

But oh well. As much as it’s a failure, there’s still nothing like Sin City. This is a weird fuckin movie that will probaly scare away many people and fascinate many others. I might even go see it again on the theory that once you have accepted somebody’s flaws you can then get to love them for their true self. Who knows, it might even grow on me. But for now it’s a weird, fucked up, half badass, half cartoon network oddity.