The movie starts well enough. The Josh Hartnet "story" is predictable, but serves as a fine introduction to what I thought would be a series of grim and gritty neo-noir pulp stories. It shouldn't have been a bookend though. I'll get to that later.
First story up. THAT YELLOW BASTARD. No title to indicate it, just Willis driving in a horribly computer generated car giving us the standard "cop about to retire" diatribe. I was confused...because I'd heard that this story was the last....
Well, there's a reason for that. After Hartigan gets shot by Bob and put in a coma, we cut away from his story and straight into...
THE HARD GOODBYE. This was jarring. I thought that Rodriguez was going to be running each main story simultaneously and cutting back and forth from each. Which would have been a confusing disaster. But now, we stick with Marv through the duration of his story (and get a nice little shout out to Dwight in his DAME TO KILL FOR story....even though he has the same face...) Overall this sequence goes very well. Rourke is terriffic and perfectly cast as Marv, easily the most intresting character in all of Miller's tales. He has fun with the part and Rodriguez has fun with the segment. Problems? Yeah, the whole thing feels EXTREMELY rushed. It's as if Rodriguez had a whip he was cracking while filming, saying "Come ON, we've got two other stories to cram in here!" I mean...when Lucile shows Marv her eaten hand she has that horrible shriek...and then seconds later asks for a cigarette. Rodriguez doesn't even give them time for FADEOUT! The whole things written off as a joke, and what could have been a creepy scene (certainly the scariest in all the graphic novels) becomes stupid and frustrating.
Still, this is easily the best segment. Rutger Hauer is great and hits all the right notes in his one scene. Elijah Wood smells like stunt casting, but he still makes for a pretty good villain...and Miller and Rodriguez don't change a thing about his character...or his messy finale...
But Rourke is the reason to see this segment. He really shines. There's one shot that'll probably really divide you guys, but I happend to laugh at it hard. It involves Rourke hamming it up in a car. You'll know it when you see it. Plus, the humor and tone is right in this section...and it matches his character.
Next up, THE BIG FAT KILL. Easily the worst of the bunch. Del Toro gives a mostly amusing performance, but he's never threatening...so we never get a sense of what the big deal is. Plus, Dwight is such a BORING character in this one. We don't have a sense of what's motivating him, or why he's doing anything for anyone. It's like Miller was still in Daredevil or Batman mode when writing this story...and just moved their hero qualities to Dwight for no reason. He's doing the right thing because it's the right thing. I take a lot of fault here with the original story, which I never particularly cared for. But the direction is equally unsinspired and flat. And the TARANTINO section? Hate to tell you, but it's even worse. QT seems bored. He comes up with a gag to try to add humor to the scene, but what could have been a taut, suspensful or creepy bit just comes off as an Excorcist parody! I'm not kidding! Doesn't work at all. I don't even like any of the shots here, or the black and white...it offers the least arresting visuals in all three stories (although the stark black and white of Dwight in the tar pits was nice). Michael Clarke Duncan is hysterical, though. Not in a good way. He just enters as a big bad baddie, but we have no idea what's motivating him, who his new "master" is, or why he has any connection to Dwight and Gail (no refrence to A DAME TO KILL FOR is given). The effect is that Manute comes across as another threatless villain who spends way too much time running off monologues about what will happen to Sin City (and Old Town)....while we're sitting in the audience wondering why we should care.
We go back to THE HARD GOODBYE at the end, after Hartigan's woken up from his coma. Willis and Alba are good in this section. Nick Stahl hams it up, but Jr. really does look silly all the way through this. Never really menacing at all. I think they coulda toned down the yellow JUST a tad. It's too bad, because some of the movies most intresting shots are here...but it just doesn't add up to much. Hartigan was never really that intresting of a character to begin with (and really, his arc is way too similiar to Marv's)...but since everyone is crunched for time...more intresting things are taken OUT of the story. We don't get to see Hartigan eventually crack and decide to confess to raping Nancy, or his wife come and visit him telling him he's getting a divorce. We don't see him broken or humiliated. We see him literally BEATEN....we see them all beaten. But it's as if that sole purprose is to make them out to be a tough guy.
And honestly, that's all Rodriguez seems intrested in. Making things look cool. Making the good guys tough and the bad guys over the top scary. And it just...doesn't...work. The visuals are too clean and spare. The violence totally cartoony. Anything that could possibly be taken seriously is shoved away in favor of a joke. Some of the performances work because the actors find the right way to create a stylized performance. I don't really blame the cast here at all....a couple of sour spots aside (I don't think Rosario Dawson gets it....).
It's as if Rodriguez was thinking that this was his Pulp Fiction. It's got everything that the Tarantino accusers often get confused about. Style over substance. Refrences without imagination. Homage without thought or subtext. Remember all that talk about ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO being Rodriguez's THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY? Remember how...off that seemd when you were finished watching the overstuffed, overdirected underwitten movie? I don't think it's a coincidence that this movie stries to have a similar structure (complete with that RIDICULOUS and utterrly TACKED ON wrap around story) as the Tarantino masterpiece. Nor is it surprising that they're selling this with Tarantino's name. This reminds me of the days after the Tarantino breakthough, when anything he was associated with highlighted his ugly mug and name with bright fucking neon.
And for all the credit Rodriguez gets for making good movies quickly...here's one project he should have taken his time with. And he rushes right through it. Not only should he have focused on one story (Marv's, naturally) and taken his time....he should have used his imagination a little more in translating his text into something that would have been better suited for cinema. Yeah, it looks like the graphic novels. But there are reasons that you go see movies, and there are reasons that you read graphic novels. The overall impression was not that I was watching a literal transition of a comic book movie and that it was exciting. I was mostly just....bored.
Sorry to rain on your parade, guys. I know a lot of you were looking forward to it (I was too). Also, this post is WAY too long. But I think my dissapointment has built up a bit of something I wanted to let lose. Feel free to ask some questions, if you'd like.
