(2005; b/w with coloration effects) A man follows a woman out onto an otherwise deserted hotel balcony and offers her a light for her cigarette - except for her red lipstick, scarlet sheath dress, and flashing green eyes, the scene is black-and-white - before killing her with a silencer. What was she running from? wonders the suave assassin.

Directors Frank Miller (who also wrote the graphic novel on which the film is based), Robert Rodriguez, and special guest Quentin Tarantino combined their talents to create this Rotoscope crime cinema.

A white scar starring his forehead, police Capt Hartigan (Bruce Willis), "pushing sixty with a bum ticker," pursuing the kidnappers of 11-year-old Nancy Callaghan, punches out his partner and smacks down two thugs before his chest gripes - "Go out with a bang," he tells himself - then wastes three more felons; but before the little girl is safe, his partner blasts him repeatedly: "Hell of a way to end a partnership." As he slumps to the edge of the dock, sirens in the distance, he consoles himself: "Old man dies, little girl lives. Fair trade."

On a heart-shaped bed with crimson sheets, a gorgeous blonde (Jaime King, colorized) lies next to big, mean, ugly Marv (Mickey Rourke) - "Why the kindness, Goldie?" - both drunk; when he wakes up, she's dead. Looking for the stealth killer, taking a beating but escaping from cops assuming he's the murderer, the ex-con reaches the apartment of Lucille (Carla Gugino), his lovely lesbian parole officer.

Surrounded by soft, fragrant, finely-figured female flesh, Marv with his hideous face and brutalized body - in need of meds to control his mental confusion - denied feminine comfort (except for Goldie) encounters another woman who looks like Goldie: "You can't be Goldie. Goldie's dead." Making a trail of gruesome violence and gore - "Killing my way to the truth" - while taking punishment only a comic-book character could withstand, Marv finds the sneaky, spectacled kid, Kevin (Elijah Wood), at the Roark farm where trophy heads of his conquests line the wall - he consumed the rest of the whores' bodies, giving scraps to his wolf - and Lucille waiting her fate in the dungeon.

In Old Town warrior women are self-enforcers of their law, especially little Miho, having made a compact with the cops to stay out of their territory while they've eliminated pimps, beatings, rapes from their profession. But Dwight McCarthy (Clive Owen) in his pursuit of nasty Jackie (Benicio Del Toro) and his gang unintentionally threatens this concord. When all looks grimmest, Gail the black Valkyrie says to her captors: "My man will find a way. He always finds a way."

The conclusion will lead us back to the beginning. Disgraced and falsely accused of raping little Nancy Callaghan - Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) explains to the former cop, "Power comes from lying," making others believe whatever he says - spending eight years in solitary confinement with only weekly letters from Cordelia to keep him sane with a sliver of hope, Hartigan (you thought he was dead, so did I) is released. Wondering what has happened to Nancy (Jessica Alba) - the letters stopped arriving months before with a severed index finger in the last envelope - he finds her, now 19, performing as an exotic dancer, realizing too late that he's been used to locate her.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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