If the flying gore and sheer luridness had been used to seriously tell a story, it would’ve been worthwhile. The jokey tone of the whole thing kinda undercut any thematic content. I hated it.
BTW, Frank Miller created Elektra, but not Bullseye. I think Bullseye’s first appearance was written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gil Kane (although the costume looks like it was designed by John Romita Sr.).
Yes, it was lurid ultra-violent macho fantasy, but that’s what I was looking for. The violence was there for its own sake, but it was well done, clever, and fresh. It was pure cool-looking escapism.
Obviously if that’s not what you’re looking for you should avoid this flick like the plague. There’s nothing wrong with that. I like violent flicks–a moral failing on my part, I suppose–and it was nice to see one that wasn’t stupid; one with original storylines and twists that were actually clever. (Although to be fair there were some pretty big plot holes.)
The acting was excellent, the storylines were clever, and the direction was just un-frackin’-believable. But it was all in service to a tale no one would see if it wasn’t for the over the top violence. So it’s not a movie I would recommend to everyone.
Krokodil is right. Bullseye was a villain many years before Miller was writing Daredevil. But he was a pretty mediocre villain. Frank Miller re-invented him into the superhuman psycho we know and love.
This was the one aspect in which I didn’t think the transition from graphic novel to movie completely worked.
In the comics, you have a compelling story and fascinating characters, punctuated by one or two shockingly violent acts in each issue (some more than others). Even reading each TPB in a couple of sittings, as I did, the violence doesn’t overwhelm the story.
The movie, on the other hand, is two dozen comics in two hours, nonstop. Just as you’ve gotten over the shock of one scene, here comes another one right behind it. At that pace, the senses and the sensibilities have the potential to be overwhelmed, as the violence overshadows the story. I felt this would be particularly true for someone who hadn’t read the comics, and for whom the story and the violent acts were unexpected–it was the case for some friends who watched it with me.
This is not to say I would have done it differently; I think that the violence was absolutely necessary to the stories. I just think that the series is best digested in smaller doses.