Marv [Mickey Rouark!] and Jackie Boy [Benicio Del Toro] were perfect and adorable characters, and their stories are perfect while they are on-screen.
Visuals are amazing... perfect.
Screenplay was very good. It often went over the top... which is okay, in some ways, because that's where the film wanted to go, but sometimes it went far enough over the top to draw attention to itself in a distracting way.
INCREDIBLES was a perfect movie. SIN CITY was not. And for me, the difference was the degree of love I felt for the characters. I loved everyone in INCREDIBLES. In SIN CITY, some of the characters were caracitures with either too little humanity or painted with too broad a brush to make me love them. In particular, the villains and women need to be lovable in film noir. Jackie Boy and Devon Aoki [Miho] are perfect. The stooges and gnomes and broads are comic, and serviceable as comedy, but they weaken the drama.
Still, to put my negative comments in context, I will probably see this film three times in the theater... the next time for pure visuals, and the third time for re-experiencing the characters, story, and dialog.
2 comments:
Your description of THE INCREDIBLES as a "perfect" film just made me stop and think. Can there be such a thing as a perfect film (or a perfect book, or painting)? Not that I think one should follow in George Lucas' footsteps and endlessly tinker with a film after it's been released (and good luck with the last two, which I abhorred... don't get me started!) ... but with so many components to a film, from costumes to lighting, music to camera angles, etc., I could see it taking years before a filmmaker felt he or she had made the best movie possible.
Or perhaps it's just my nitpicky, impossibly critical nature showing its face in saying this. But I truly doubt I could think of a movie I would describe as Perfect.
"Perfect" in a logical sense is probably impossible by definition.
But "Perfect" in the sense of no flaws, and a strong sense of success, is possible.
I dismiss the logical notion of perfection as a critical term.
But a flawless gem is possible. Reducing perfection to the absence of flaws may diminish the significance of criticism to pure craftsmenship. So I add to the absence of flaws a profound sense of satisfaction. Like having have all you wanted to eat. Maybe 'replete' gives the sense of it. That implies something of the subjective nature of the satisfaction involved.
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