Lord of War (2005) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

March 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Nicolas Cage, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan, Ethan Hawke
written and directed by Andrew Niccol

by Walter Chaw At times the film that Paul Brickman's brilliant screenplay for Deal of the Century promised, Aussie futurist Andrew Niccol crafts with Lord of War a sometimes transcendent, sometimes finger-wagging fable about a ridiculously successful gunrunner, Yuri (Nicolas Cage), prowling the hot spots of the Third World like a vampire in trenchcoat and shades. (I'm not convinced it wasn't the effect Niccol was going for, what with the obvious connection between spreading pestilence and feeding on death–and, of course, what with Cage's best role arguably being the quasi-vampire in Vampire's Kiss.) Without much of a narrative, even subplots concerning Yuri's mad, druggie brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) and model wife Ava (Bridget Moynahan) seem like way-stations along a dotted line. Too often, the picture lives and dies on its ability to keep the pace fluid–but just that need for momentum suggests something amiss at the heart of the piece, a certain surface tension that would pop should the rock-star protagonist we envy ever collide against the satire of the kind of colossal moral vacuity required of his vocation. It's the embedded problem of what Hitchcock observed as a character we like because he does his job well: what if that job is essentially reprehensible and, moreover, what if the ultimate desire of the film is that we experience righteous repugnance?

16 Blocks (2006)

March 3, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Bruce Willis, Mos Def, David Morse, Cylk Cozart
screenplay by Richard Wenk
directed by Richard Donner

16blocksby Walter Chaw There's a lot to like about Richard Donner's ultimately simpering retread of the long-dormant corrupt-cop/asphalt-jungle genre 16 Blocks. Among the highlights is Bruce Willis's drunken, crooked detective Jack, who–sporting a pot belly, a gimpy leg, bad facial hair, flop sweat, and breath you can practically smell through the screen–makes a decision early on to be the hero at odds with ex-partner Frank (David Morse) in transporting his charge Eddie (Mos Def) the titular sixteen city blocks so that Eddie can testify against New York's finest. Standing in their way: an arbitrary time limit and a whole department of collectors for the widows and orphans club, looking to exact a little Giuliani on the suddenly-vigilante pair. Comparisons to Firewall, that other picture buried in the first quarter 2006 starring an over-the-hill tough guy, are inevitable–and revealing, too, in charting the extent to which ego allows Ford and Willis to age as action heroes (Ford: not at all; Willis: a good bit) and, consequently, how successful these films are in crafting their respective scenarios. The standard against which 16 Blocks will be held, however, is one established by the likes of Prince of the City and Serpico (or even a later Sidney Lumet like Q&A)–it's they to which Donner clearly aspires, what with the picture's setting, its admittedly spurious exposé of bad apples on the force, and at least the first hour of Willis's performance, equal parts broken-down gunsel and brown-bagging wino.

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) + Domino (2005) [New Line Platinum Series|Widescreen] – DVD

March 2, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, DVD, France, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
**½/****
starring David Strathairn, Patricia Clarkson, George Clooney, Jeff Daniels
screenplay by George Clooney & Grant Heslov
directed by George Clooney

DOMINO
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo
screenplay by Richard Kelly
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw Rigorous and principled, George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck. is a curiously slight film for more reasons than the fact that almost a third of it is comprised of archival footage integrated semi-successfully into the story. It's a recreation of a very specific battle in a very specific war that resonates with our Patriot Act/Guantanamo Bay situation, and indeed, that's the target Clooney seems most interested in striking. But without a larger context (the sort that would have weakened its allegorical usefulness), the picture sets itself up as something as obvious as it is minor and feather-light. It's a professional, high-minded, and staid biopic is what I'm saying, a film that says what it says with the stark B&W cinematography of a Dr. Strangelove, but in its icy, humourless way, it's the same stark B&W cinematography of a Fail-Safe, too. It's close and under-populated–and even with so insular and finely-focused a spotlight, it contains at least two completely superfluous characters.

Freedomland (2006)

February 17, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, Ron Eldard
screenplay by Richard Price, based on his novel
directed by Joe Roth

Freedomlandby Walter Chaw Given that Joe Roth (America's Sweethearts, Christmas with the Kranks) directed it, Freedomland's first and biggest surprise is that it's not worse than it is. Maybe that has something to do with Samuel L. Jackson delivering his best performance since Changing Lanes, or a Richard Price screenplay (adapted from his own novel) that, while overwritten throughout and unforgivably histrionic by its end, manages to present its tensions with topicality and a passing familiarity, at least, with the complexities of race relations. It's deliberately set in 1999, just a few years after South Carolina mommy Susan Smith drowned her two children in a lake and blamed a non-descript "black man" in a knit cap for their carjacking/abduction, and the similarities to the Smith story continue through to incredulity in the black community and the involvement of activist parental groups. (Freedomland meanwhile takes place a decade after another case it seems to be based on: Bostonian Charles Stuart killing his pregnant wife and blaming a black guy, stirring nearby black suburb Roxbury to outrage.) Marc Klaas to the film's Susan Smith is child-safety advocate Karen Collucci (Edie Falco), while the New Jersey barrens–and, in its narrative fulcrum, a burned-out children's asylum called "Freedomland"–stand in for the wilds of the Deep South. The picture abounds with such similes and ironies, existing in a bizarre, terrifying version of the United States where iron-willed armies of the bereaved march through the blighted wastes of urban decay with sticks and resignation, looking for lost children they know, more likely than not, to be dead and, more, victims of their own parents.

Red Eye (2005) [Widescreen] + Four Brothers (2005) [Special Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] – DVDs

February 15, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Revenge, Thriller, Wes Craven

RED EYE
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jack Scalia
screenplay by Carl Ellsworth
directed by Wes Craven

FOUR BROTHERS
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese, André 3000, Garrett Hedlund
screenplay by David Elliot & Paul Lovett
directed by John Singleton

by Walter Chaw If it barely registers at under ninety minutes, Wes Craven's high-concept thriller Red-Eye is carried along by a couple of excellent lead performances (from Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams) and a revenge subtext that lends surprising gravity to the lingering sensitivity of a sexual assault victim's scars. Red-Eye plays its 9/11 hand–and what else would you expect from a film about an assassination attempt on the Director of Homeland Security that takes place mostly on an airplane–as a metaphor for rape, because rape, after all, is as good a metaphor as any for a terrorist attack on native soil. Look to the glut of home invasion films (of which this is also one) in 2005 as further clarification of that connection–aliens of an inscrutable nature and purpose (and morality, it goes without saying) have come into the places we thought most sacred and taken what they wanted of our innocence: our once inviolate sense of security. Heady stuff for a film that is essentially Nick of Time on a plane, and indeed it may ultimately be too slight a framework to support the amount of topical sociology I'm tempted to ask it to bear, but there are moments now and again weighted with so much proverbial baggage that Red-Eye, with its melancholy regret, sucks the air right out of the theatre.

La scorta (1993) – DVD

February 14, 2006Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Italy, Thriller

**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Claudio Amendola, Enrico Lo Verso, Carlo Cecchi, Ricky Memphis
screenplay by Graziano Diana and Simona Izzo
directed by Ricky Tognazzi

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no way to put a fine point on this: La scorta is Backdraft with bodyguards. That is to say, it's one of those unsung-hero movies that: a) takes its subject very seriously; b) tries to give voice to a voiceless few; and c) fails to avoid every pitfall of the genre. The film is perhaps less heinous in its cinematic crimes than that Ron Howard schlockfest, but it's relentlessly mediocre, full of scenes that telegraph their significance and constantly reduce the characters to shorthand or macho clichés. Though La scorta does a good job of running down the outrageous risks faced by police bodyguards of judges, it doesn't bring their plight alive, choosing to make a gift of "white-knuckle tension" instead of dealing with the very real fear our heroes face. It's a smiley-faced version of pure, screaming terror–which, unfortunately, most people would probably prefer to something more free-form.

Separate Lies (2005) – DVD

February 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C-
starring Emily Watson, Tom Wilkinson, Rupert Everett, John Neville
screenplay by Julian Fellowes, based on the novel A Way Through the Wood by Nigel Balchin
directed by Julian Fellowes

Separateliescap

by Walter Chaw You could call Separate Lies either a second pass at Asylum or just another drop in the English prestige bucket that finds the stuffy upper-crust married to silly women who bring down their country estates of cards. It hinges on performances when it can no longer surprise with its domestic meltdowns, and because its stable of English actors is stocked with more thoroughbreds than the Kentucky Derby, it gains a lot of currency in doing so. But Julian Fellowes's very British symphony of "sorry"s is extraordinarily familiar–an Adrian Lyne film without slickness or sex about what happens when a desperate housewife dabbles in the dangerous and the commensurate desperation with which her stiff-upper-lip husband scrambles to keep his dignity and status intact. It'd make a bigger impression if we learned more about the class struggle in Britain, I think, but without experience in the whys and wherefores of that caste system, what we're left with is a superbly-performed melodrama with a strained premise dissected in airless, suffocating situations.

Repo Man (1984) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

February 6, 2006Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Esoterica, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash
written and directed by Alex Cox

Repomanunicapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The question I ask after a screening of Repo Man is this: is it punk? And if it isn't punk, what is it? Those used to the anarcho-communitarian (i.e., "nice") ideals adopted by punk's intelligentsia would have no truck with the mentality of this film, whose hero, Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez), is in it for cheap thrills and hasn't got an ideal in his head. Indeed, once he gets sucked into the more "intense" world of car repossessor Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) and thus gainful employment, he distances himself from his punk friends–as represented by the three mohawk'd chumps whose idea of "doing crimes" is "let's order sushi and not pay!" But the repo gig leads to another dead end, as Bud turns out to be a blowhard full of idiot rules and his compatriots prove more unstable than Otto's old friends. There is no future to Otto's dreaming–just the cul-de-sac of punk's dark flipside: nihilism.

Thunder and Lightning (1977) – DVD

February 3, 2006Posted in1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring David Carradine, Kate Jackson, Eddie Barth, Roger C. Carmel
screenplay by William Hjortsberg
directed by Corey Allen

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A long time ago…I saw Thunder and Lightning with my family on a drive-in double-bill with Star Wars. I remember the experience of the former being not only uncomfortable for my 6-year-old self, but in fact the polar opposite of the elaborate fantasy I was there to see (again). Yet aside from a couple of scenes that stuck, I later drew a complete blank on what it was all about. In one of those grail quests exclusive to sedentary movie nerds, the idea that I had to find out never stopped bothering me, though I now know there was a reason for my initial discomfort: it turns out that Thunder and Lightning takes entirely serviceable moonshine B-movie tropes and does as little as possible with them.

Sundance ’06: Adam’s Apples

January 31, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Germany, Sundance
Adams æbler*/****starring Ulrich Thomsen, Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Nicolas Browritten and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen by Alex Jackson Adam's Apples begins with a Danish skinhead (Ulrich Thomsen) getting off a bus at a halfway house out in the country and keying the vehicle as it drives away, immediately telling us that this isn't going to be a movie that seriously considers the economic origins and social ramifications of the Danish white-supremacist movement. The skinhead, whose name is Adam, meets the other inhabitants of the halfway house, which include an Arabic stickup-man (who speaks in adorably broken Danish and…

Sundance ’06: The Proposition

January 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance, UK, Western
*/****starring Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, John Hurtscreenplay by Nick Cavedirected by John Hillcoat by Alex Jackson In his review of Rene Cardona's exploitation quickie about the Jonestown Massacre Guyana: Cult of the Damned, Roger Ebert describes how Cardona ends the film with photos of the real-life victims while the audience is solemnly reminded "that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it," prompting Ebert to crack, "So remember, don't drink cyanide." I only wish that John Hillcoat's The Proposition were that lucid in delivering its Important Lesson. This is a movie at least as gory and…

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

January 25, 2006Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Mexico, Mystery, Theatrical, Western

*½/****
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam
screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga
directed by Tommy Lee Jones

Threeburialsby Walter Chaw Crash by way of Cormac McCarthy, Tommy Lee Jones's "fuck you" of a mouthful The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is another fairytale salvo from the race divide, fired from that good place that results in cultural artifacts so unbearably cheesy and proselytizing that any potential heat is lost long before the second reel has finished unspooling. It's about serendipity, this elegy for the American West, hence no transgression is left unredeemed in its long, rambling, "it's good for you, so swallow it" narrative, with blame going in equal portion to Jones–whose smug, smarter-than-you are attitude has shoehorned him into prestigious position as the resident asshole of Man of the House, Men in Black II, and The Missing–and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Amores Perros), who paints every Mexican in the film in the same shade of saintly. (All the gringos, on the other hand, have a lot to learn about the grand mystery of being human.) It's tedious, unsurprising stuff, this picture–the kind of thing that gets the Right in a bunch about how Hollywood is a tool of the subversive Lefties while making smart folks on both sides of the Culture War cringe before its condescension.

The Alan Clarke Collection – DVD

January 24, 2006Posted in1970s, 1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Crime, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Prison, Television, UK
SCUM (BBC VERSION) (1977) ***½/**** starring Ray Winstone, Phil Daniels, David Threfall screenplay by Roy Minton directed by Alan Clarke SCUM (THEATRICAL VERSION) (1979) ***½/**** starring Ray Winstone, Phil Daniels, Mick Ford screenplay by Roy Minton directed by Alan Clarke MADE IN BRITAIN (1982) ***½/**** starring Tim Roth, Eric Richard, Terry Richards screenplay by David Leland directed by Alan Clarke THE FIRM (1989) ***/**** starring Gary Oldman, Lesley Manville, Phillip Davis screenplay by Al Hunter directed by Alan Clarke ELEPHANT (1989) ***½/**** screenplay by Bernard MacLaverty directed by Alan Clarke DIRECTOR: ALAN CLARKE (1991) **/**** directed by Corin Campbell-Hill by…

The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes (2006); Mutual Appreciation (2006); Unknown (2006)

January 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Family, Fantasy, France, Germany, Music, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

THE PIANOTUNER OF EARTHQUAKES
*½/****
starring Amira Casar, Gottfried John, Assumpta Serna, César Saracho
screenplay by Alan Passes and The Quay Brothers
directed by The Quay Brothers

MUTUAL APPRECIATION
***½/****
starring Justin Rice, Rachel Clift, Andrew Bujalski, Seung-Min Lee
written and directed by Andrew Bujalski

UNKNOWN
½*/****
starring Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Bridget Moynahan, Joe Pantoliano
screenplay by Matthew Waynee
directed by Simon Brand

by Walter Chaw The Quay Brothers, Stephen and Timothy, are marvellous animators, having shepherded stop-motion and a disquieting biomechanical ethic into a series of notably discomfiting shorts, more than one of which pays tribute to their hero/mentor Jan Svankmajer. I met their 1995 transition to live-action features (Institute Benjamenta) with equal parts excitement, curiosity, and trepidation–I believed they'd be a little like either fellow animator-turned-director Tim Burton or those masters of a form who overreach by switching to a different medium, à la Michael Jordan. The truth is somewhere in-between, as the Quays have retained a bit of their glacial patience and a marked affection for created environments but have miscalculated the extent to which our fascination with animate clockworks translates into a commensurate fascination with people sitting around, staring at a wall. The former inspires existential thoughts on the nature of sentience; the latter generally inspires boredom. No question in my mind that something's lurking in the Quays' underneath, but it's important to mark that fine line distinguishing fascination from obtuseness for the sake of itself. Exploring the waking/dreamlife divide is interesting–but it's neither original nor terribly useful when the main tactic seems to be to conjure up pomposity-inspired sleepiness.

Two for the Money (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Al Pacino, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Sports

**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey, Rene Russo, Armand Assante
screenplay by Dan Gilroy
directed by D.J. Caruso

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Finally, a movie as loud and incoherent as Al Pacino himself. He's the resident corruptor of Two for the Money, and the film gives him massive monologues of dubious insight just so the Duke of Hambone can do his thing. Sadly, he's not the one running the show–that honour belongs to the perpetually-ripped Matthew McConaughey, whose role requires him to look mesmerized as Pacino talks of things that "pucker your asshole to the size of a decimal point." Two for the Money sure has that effect: the experience is assaultive in so many ways that you're likely to be riveted even as you wish it would all go away.

Fun with Dick & Jane (1977) – DVD

December 12, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

Fun with Dick and Jane
*/**** Image C+ Sound A-
starring George Segal, Jane Fonda, Ed McMahon, Dick Gautier
screenplay by David Giler and Jerry Belson and Mordecai Richler, based on the novel by Gerald Gaiser
directed by Ted Kotcheff

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Although Hollywood and Big Statements have gone hand-in-hand since the very beginning, it's usually a match made in artistic Hell. Being virtuous and fun taxes the tiny minds of the movie colony, resulting in unpleasant "entertainments" that frequently cancel themselves out. Case in point: the original Fun with Dick and Jane, which races through some liberal subtext concerning economic hardships and "materialism" while slinging lame jokes that trivialize everything the film name-checks. That Ted Kotcheff isn't the right guy for pointed satire should have been obvious from the rest of his fuzzy career, but the complete lack of seriousness (or black absurdism) from all quarters reduces the film to just another naughty crime comedy that isn't even very funny–a fact made all the more puzzling by the presence of Canada's acid wit Mordecai Richler among the writing credits.

Hammett (1982) – DVD

November 22, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery

**/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Frederic Forrest, Peter Boyle, Marilu Henner, Roy Kinnear
screenplay by Ross Thomas and Dennis O'Flaherty, based on the novel by Joe Gores
directed by Wim Wenders

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Wim Wenders nominally directed Hammett, and its famous recutting by the studio depressed him to the point of taking revenge with a lovely film called The State of Things. (Hammett sat in limbo for so long that the two actually came out at the same time.) Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to connect this overdesigned, hermetically-sealed, zestily cynical movie with the director's gently disappointed, free-ranging, existing-location-dependent masterpieces. More accurately, Hammett is a Francis Ford Coppola film, a Zoetrope film, and a landmark in the failure of '80s cinephilia. It does for Dashiell Hammett what Raiders of the Lost Ark did for Flash Gordon, which is to say it reproduces surfaces without a shred of critical distance or analytical incisiveness. It's a non-stop reference orgy that loves the idiotic conventions it ought to be deconstructing–Chinatown, as seen through the prism of Sin City: a series of hyper-real, hard-boiled requirements to be fulfilled rather than a summing up of what they represent.

DIFF ’05: Brick

November 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Thriller
**½/****starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Nora Zehetner, Laura Dannonwritten and directed by Rian Johnson by Walter Chaw Brick is a cult classic-in-the-making and one for which I harbour a goodly amount of affection. (I should say I admire its chutzpah, if not its ultimate success.) It's an experiment in screenwriting and matching shots, a gimmick stretched to feature-length by first-time hyphenate Rian Johnson that puts Raymond Chandler's hardboiled lexicon into the mouths of disconsolate teens seething at a high school somewhere in the twenty-first century. It would've been a fantastic noir except for that displacement, as its coolness decomposes every…

DIFF ’05: The Matador

November 16, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Thriller
**½/****starring Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hallwritten and directed by Richard Shepard by Walter Chaw Wearing a sleazebag moustache and an ugly print shirt, Pierce Brosnan watches a bartender shake his drink instead of stirring it and the film slows down and blurs accordingly. It's post-modernism as gauzy, lazy hallucination--a swoon that suggests a minor, nearly-imperceptible tremor in reality and the only moment in which hyphenate Richard Shepard acknowledges the irony of the former 007's presence in another licensed-to-kill role as assassin-for-hire Julian Noble. Fond of bottomless tequila and "sucky-fucky" instead of "blushy-blushy," Noble is an unctuous,…

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

November 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen
written and directed by Shane Black

Kisskissbangbangby Walter Chaw The same kind of movie as Doug Liman's Mr. and Mrs. Smith but more so, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang marks the hyphenate debut of star screenwriter Shane Black, and it's the kind of movie his Last Action Hero would have been had they aimed it at adults (and cast actors). A meta-exercise taken to plucky, insouciant excess, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is nihilistic, misanthropic, and it just might hate its audience a little, but damn if it doesn't wash out as something as exhilaratingly lawless as Sin City and recklessly experimental as Rian Johnson's Brick (two other examples of noir's recent extreme makeover). Though it's not shy in its one agonizing scene of gore, the picture seems more concerned about the way we assimilate–and anticipate–sex and violence at the movies.