I feel sick.
Be careful what you wish for, people wiser than I say, as it might pound you in the head for two and a half hours late on a Friday night. Um. I left feeling dazed and havening absolutely no idea what I was doing. I am speaking of course, of a movie.
I am speaking of Sin City.
For those who have never read the comics, I can say with absolute certainty that you can watch the movie instead. The comics are entrancing, visually stunning and the clear work of a man who understands what Chandler was talking about when he said Doyle and Christie were wusses. For those who have read the comics, please understand that it will be held up for perhaps generations of comic fans as one of two things: Proof that comics cannot be made into movies verbatim without angering the world; or proof that it's already been done so it doesn't need to be done again.
This movie is exactly like reading the comic books for two and a half hours. If I read them for more than about twenty minutes, I get queezy and have to stop. I have, perhaps, too soft a heart. They are amazing, and they are exactly what they are supposed to be. They are hard to read. They are noire for a generation of readers who grew up with sixty years of the blackest literature the world could crank out with a typewriter, and eating it for breakfast. This is for a generation who do not understand the shock and horror of being exposed to something through media that absolutely stupefies you to the point you forget everything else.
It's a car crash for people who watched both "Gone In 60 Seconds"s.
I will not say this is a bad movie. It is a terrific movie. It is an awesome movie. It is a movie that set out to make a point and made it with a blackjack and a gun at the end of a dark alley, with a sneer and an unkind word.
You must watch this movie.
You must not watch this movie.
This is the precise and accurate cinematization (is that the word?) of a story in which Miller did for Crime pulp what his Dark Knight Returns saga did for Batman. It dragged it right into the real world and then about a mile past. It made even the hardest-core fans look away in disgust while screaming "Hell Yeah!"
This movie is very hard to watch.
A friend with whom I saw this movie said that Rodriguez (and Moore) is the director who could pull of Watchmen. I don't know if I agree with that yet, and I don't know if I could ever agree or disagree. I'd have to see it on the screen and it would have to make me cringe in awe and disgust. Rodriguez has, in this film, created an absolutely unsubtle stab into the animal state of the human condition. However, the careful, even loving subtlety with which he recreates the timing and vicious animal humanity reflects an understanding of both media that staggers the mind to attempt to convey. Could he make a movie of the epic proportions demanded by Watchmen? Maybe. Could he do with a finished product of less than ten or twelve hours? There's no reason to ask that quesion. Watchmen is currently reported to be in the hands of the director of the Bourne Supremacy (at least according to IMDB) and is unrelated. I just needed to think about something besides the wet squelching of black-and-white-and-yellow blood.
I have no idea what I think of this film. I think I would have to watch it again, and for the moment that thought makes me feel queezy and dizzy again. I'm afraid it was a really great movie that will define movies for years to come. It makes me afraid to go near a theater next summer. I shudder to think of the second and third teir wannabes scrabble for the blackest piece of filth they can find. The Matrix shaped almost half a decade of movies; Pulp Fiction is still having its name dropped in movies; perhaps John Hughes and Kevin Smith will never go away. There will be gore. I don't know how I feel.
No, that's not true. I feel a little sick.