Technology has finally allowed artists like Frank Miller and Stan Lee to bring their visions to the big screen without compromise. Sin City, originally a series of graphic novels, did require navigating Hollywood politics so that Miller and Robert Rodriguez could both be credited as directors. Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk Til Dawn, the Spy Kids trilogy) has always preferred to do things his own way–serving as his own scriptwriter, cinematographer, editor and composer, all of which he does here–couldn’t get a rules waiver and resigned from the Director’s Guild rather than cave in!

This movie is very different from any of Lee’s comic superhero stories and you won’t find a single character on or close to the good side of the temptation line. Some try to do good things or for good reasons; Hartigan, the aging cop played by Bruce Willis, is nearly a good guy but he’s too willing to justify his actions with the intended results. Further, X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four are all celebrations in vibrant colors but here everything and everyone is shades of gray with only blood, eyes, a yellow man and the occasional red dress colorful exceptions.

Especially the blood, which is everywhere all the time, so consider yourself warned: Sin City is a gorefest. I don’t watch horror/slasher flicks but I expect few of them exceed this quantity of explicit, gushing mayhem, severed limbs and even a bit of cannibalism. Miller and Rodriguez don’t use humour to lighten the mood either, starting grim and ending with the same.

Plenty of name actors in what’s more a loosely-connected short stories than a feature, many of them playing against type and quite a few barely recognizable. In addition to Willis, the cast includes Jessica Alba as a stripper capable of nearly liquid moves, Jaime King, Rosario Dawson, Devon Aoki, Britanny Murphy, Alexis Bledel, Carla Gugina (one of the older actresses in a featured role but still willing to show her hot naked body), Elijah Wood as a martial arts master who never speaks, Mickey Rourke as a neanderthal muscleman avenging his love’s murder, Michael Madsen, Josh Hartnett, Benecio Del Toro, Clive Owen, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Rutger Hauer and Powers Booth as powerful brothers and a completely unrecognizable Nick Stahl as Booth’s son. Look for Frank Miller as the priest who hears Rourke’s confession.

Honestly, there’s too much blood, misery and a nearly absolute absence of redemption in the movie for my taste, barely alleviated by raising the characters to sort of live cartoons, and I’d have liked a bit more coherence in the plot which Miller and Rodriguez sacrifice to give fans of the original printed version more of it. The elements of a masterwork are otherwise present, great acting, pacing that creates tension, astonishing visuals and intelligent dialog.

recommended

This John Sturges classic is over 40 years old now and while the production values (e.g., lack of big explosions and long sad pull shots) show it, there are only a handful of war movies which come close to it for overall impact. The Great Escape is a big sprawling story and has lots of recognizable stars, many of them young and who used this as a launch pad.

By the early ’60s most Americans had transitioned to seeing Germany as our ally against the Soviet Union and so for the most part the enemy characters are not villainous or evil, more committed to their cause and victory. Stalag 17, produced a decade earlier, is a decent comparison for the change in portrayal of Nazis.

Plot basics: Late in WWII the Nazis decide to bring together in a single, heavily guarded and secured place the Allied prisoners who’ve been the most persistent in escaping from other camps. Not necessarily the best strategy though because these prisoners have been tasked with allowing themselves to be recaptured after escapes to draw resources inside the homeland and putting all of them together means they have all the specialists required to break out even from the purpose-built stockade. This time, though, the Allied soldiers intend to make their departure from hospitality permanent.

There are so many good performances in this movie. Standouts for me include: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Donald Pleasance. Hannes Messemer (the camp commandant), James Donald, and Harry Riebauer (no doubt the model for Sgt. Schulze on Hogan’s Heroes). Also getting important early exposure are James Coburn, Charles Bronson, David McCallum and Gordon Jackson. The interplay between Garner and Pleasance during their part of the escape is particularly touching and human and not expected in a war flick.

The screenplay, full of smart dialogue, was written by Hollywood veteran W.R. Burnett (Edward G. Robinson starrer Little Caeser, noir classic This Gun for Hire, and multi-Oscar nominee The Asphalt Jungle) and James Clavell from Paul Brickhill’s book. Clavell covered similar territory in his terrific novel King Rat, the movie version of which gave George Segal one of his first major parts, before gaining fame from his novels Shogun and Tai-Pan. Surpise for me looking at Clavell’s IMDB listing is that he also wrote the screenplay of English racial tension drama To Sir, With Love.

highly recommended

Oliver Stone made this trainwreck of a movie. Colin Farrell, hair dyed blonde, stars as the ancient Macedonian boy king who conquered most of the ‘known world’ before he was 30 and then died shortly after. Angelina Jolie plays his mother, if you can believe that, as a twisted woman who couldn’t keep control of her husband. I mean, seriously, Jolie may not be exactly your taste in looks but there’s no denying she’s incredibly gorgeous and sexy and so besides being too young she’s too beautiful for the role.

What really makes this movie terrible, and I mean railspike in forehead terrible, is that Stone took what should have been an amazing, epic story and bloated it so badly that after an hour (it’s almost three) I was screaming through the Tivo program guide looking for something, anything else to watch on an early Saturday evening.

Sure, Stone stood almost firm on the homosexual relationship and Hephaistion (well-played by Jared Leto). Where the action could have popped off the screen as Alexander took on Persia and each further conquest, he kept taking the movie into slack, talky scenes. Yes, Oliver, we get the point that the other Macedonians wanted to go home and enjoy their plundered treasures but yack yack yack.

Maybe the movie got better after I changed channels; seems unlikely that I’ll ever know.
not recommended

While you might think Sin City was the only graphic novel-type movie Bruce Willis made last year, you’d be wrong. Though it pretty much flew under everyone’s radar, Hostage was definitely in the same niche. Since I’ve not yet seen the Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez noir epic I won’t compare the two but this twisted police drama was definitely enjoyable.

Willis was LAPD’s top hostage negotiator but got burned out after messing up a case where the psycho blew away the girlfriend and her little boy. He retreats to be police chief for a Ventura County town so sleepy his own teenage daughter (Willis’ own daughter Rumer) is screaming to move back to Los Angeles. And then these three teenaged hoodlums decide to get back their pride and a little more when an accountant’s 16 year old daughter flips them the bird in the pizza parlor parking lot… That’s the hostage situation, but the twist comes from the accountant (a pudgy Kevin Pollack) being a little too smart for his own self–his clients are faceless mobsters for whom he creates sophisticated offshore systems to launder money and, of course avoid taxes.

Directed by videogame vet Florent Siri and written by Doug Richardson from Robert Crais’ novel, Hostage makes very effective use of its screen time, with little put up that doesn’t come back later; the one memorable exception is an early quip from Willis to a young deputy about his wearing bright red sneakers to work. Some of the dialog could be stronger and one of the teen hoodlums (Kevin Kelly, who we recognized as Claire’s strange bisexual boyfriend on Six Feet Under) is just a bit too cartoonish in his wanton sadistic nihilism but Willis is a pro and features in almost every minute of the movie, washing out small concerns.

recommended