Cinderella Man
Director: Ron Howard
Writers: Story by Cliff Hollingsworth, Screenplay by Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman
Producers: Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Penny Marshall
Stars: Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Paddy Considine, Bruce McGill

When Ron Howard goes for overt style we can get an abomination like his version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And when he goes for critical love we can get puffed-up frauds like A Beautiful Mind. The more restrained he is the better the movie ends up – Apollo 13 being the most prominent example of the merits of a no-nonsense classicist’s approach and his best film. He is an able craftsman, at his best when serving a story rather than trying to bark its virtues at us.

And for a great deal of Cinderella Man, this is the treatment with which we are blessed. Howard is respectful and cautious of sensation in dramatizing the unlikely story of Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe), a washed-up boxer who, during The Great Depression, made a captivating second run at glory in order to feed his family. While he does take full note of the way Braddock’s struggle against age, injury and destitution inspired many around the country, he does not sink into that Seabiscuit trap of mythologizing the hero to the extent that he seems to conquer the whole Depression by his lonesome.

Back in the Roaring 20’s Braddock is a rising contender with an underwhelming left but a devil of a right, and he and his longtime corner man Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti) can take home thousands from a successful bout. Braddock and his wife Mae (Renée Zellweger) have a respectable house for their three children, and more comfort than two New Jersey kids might ever have hoped for. But in seemingly the blink of an eye – or more accurately, in the course of one effective time-lapse pan – their wealth is wiped out, they are living in a single crowded room four months behind on the bills, and Jim has broken his hand again and lost his boxing license while trying to earn $50.

It concisely personifies the effect the Depression had on so many – a single crushing blow that changed their lives irrevocably. Though our focus is on the Braddocks we have the opportunity to glimpse how others dealt with the crisis – Mae pleads with a power company man not to cut off her electricity, and we can see the shame on his face but also the fear – if he doesn’t do it he loses his job, and two of his colleagues have been let go this week already.

Howard casts the picture very well and the frame is filled with hardened, weathered faces trying to preserve some light in their eyes. Braddock wants to believe he can work his way out of this hole without having to send the kids away to well-off relatives, but getting picked for a shift at the docks is rare enough, and he has to cover the cast on his hand with shoe polish, hope no one notices, and do as much work as he can with his left arm.

What compels us is how we first see his pride, then we see how selflessly and unquestioningly he will swallow that pride for the sake of his children – applying for federal assistance and even begging (in tears) the members of the boxing commission for a handout. We are seeing a man who would break himself open if he thought it would help keep his family together and fed. Boxing is the right sport for him.

And it’s at that moment, by twist of fate, a last-minute replacement is needed for an undercard fight at Madison Square Garden. Braddock isn’t supposed to last two rounds, but his left arm has been tempered by the dock work and is now a dangerous weapon. He begins a second career and, as he says in a press conference, it’s easy to be motivated when you are fighting for milk. Soon he is being talked of as a contender for the heavyweight crown held by Max Baer (Craig Bierko) – who is described as having killed two men during matches* (*this is historically dubious, and Baer’s estate has fiercely protested his depiction in this film). And though this portrayal of Baer behaves as a fearsome showoff and bully, he is genuinely reluctant to face the creaky Braddock, since he is sure that two will inevitably become three.

It’s effective to contrast the business of boxing with Braddock’s straight-ahead decency. The promoter (Bruce McGill) who essentially controls his fate will not be distracted from the goal of putting paying customers in chairs, which is why Braddock needs a hustler like Gould to advocate for him. Paul Giamatti has paid enough membership dues to enter the Character Actor Hall of Fame, and we must simply wonder which role will get him the awards he already earned in American Splendor, Sideways and a host of other films. Here, as Gould, he is the key to our understanding the psychological gamesmanship of boxing both in and out of the ring.

He curses, he entreats, he wheedles, he boasts, he baits, he explodes at referees, all the while encouraging Braddock, spurring him on, striving to make him feel invincible and his opponent vulnernable like a good cornerman must do. It’s an orchestral triumph of calculation disguised as manic extroversion, and Giamatti’s gift to us is his ability to slyly let us in on it while also showing his genuine loyalty and affection for Braddock.

Crowe and Zellweger both demonstrate how they have managed to bridge the world of acting and movie stardom – they are called upon here to be virtuous and larger-than-life yet not appear false and they do so. Crowe, particularly, achieves another one of his transformations-that-never-looks-like-one – compare his darting, searching eyes here to the confident gaze of Maximus, or the wounded and suspicious narrow stare of Detective Bud White. All vastly different, and yet all are roles he has made definitively his own in his rise to fame.

The boxing is competently and excitingly filmed by rising cinematographer Salvatore Totino, which is to Howard’s credit here even as he stands in the long shadows of others (like Scorsese in Raging Bull) who have captured brilliant cinema in the boxing ring. His focus is more on tracking the mood – who is setting the pace, who really believes they are winning, and who is just luring you in for the knockout. Since the emotional premise is that it is Braddock’s near-hopeless circumstances that gave him lethal focus and stamina in the ring, it’s a wise choice.

The screenplay is co-written by Akiva Goldsman, who never met a formula he didn’t like and never found a page of dialogue he couldn’t water down so it served nothing but that formula. A few of his trademark groaners survive, thankfully his influence is not as noticeable here as it was in A Beautiful Mind. Cinderella Man can be effectively described as a movie that steps right at many of the places and moments Mind stepped wrong, largely by trusting the power of the story itself.

Unleashed
Director Louis Leterrier
Writer: Luc Besson
Producers: Luc Besson, Steven Chasman, Jet Li
Stars: Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon

The prolific Luc Besson attempts with many of his films to strike a balance by presenting an outlandish scenario, then taking it a step or two more seriously than you’d expect, though not so seriously that you feel constrained from a grin. Producing and writing, he assembles a good mix of ingredients in Unleashed, not pandering or shortchanging in his depiction of the awkward process by which a tortured and repressed soul starts to discover itself, but also keeping the violence and style coming and giving each performer room to do what they do best.

For Jet Li, playing “Danny the Dog” (the movie’s title outside of North America), it means adding a new wrinkle to his already legendarily-malleable martial arts repertoire. Compare the serene, fluid grace he showed in Hero with the savage intensity he conjures here. For Bob Hoskins, as his loan shark owner/master/“uncle” Bart, it means calling on the crazy intensity which has immortalized him in the circles of the British crime films even as American audiences have mostly known him for affable supporting roles.

For Morgan Freeman, playing blind piano tuner Sam, it means projecting the quiet dignity and homely wisdom with which he operates best. I have long appreciated the way Freeman seems to embrace his function in most Hollywood movies as the injection of gravitas. His dark pool eyes and rich syrupy baritone are like the garnish on the plate which makes your meal look more grown-up, whether he is calmly pronouncing the destruction of life as we know it via comet in Deep Impact, convincing us he really believes Keanu Reeves is an expert on cold fusion in Chain Reaction, or, here, teaching simple decency to a kung-fu master raised as a dog.

Unleashed is about the journey of Danny from Bart’s influence to Sam’s, and how in that process he re-discovers humanity and the secrets of his past. He also gets into a lot of bloody fights.

Bart runs his territory by simple rules – when you owe him money, he comes around each week with Danny (who he has raised and trained since childhood) in tow. Danny’s got a collar on and is docile as can be. If you do not pay, Bart takes off the collar, and Danny, without a twinge, will beat to death anyone Bart points out.

Danny has earned a reputation around the underbelly of Glasgow, and Bart is just becoming aware of the profit-making potential of finding new arenas to exploit Danny’s skills, like throwing him into underground death-matches and wagering on his victories. But a twist of fate separates them, and a wounded, confused Danny finds himself in Sam’s care.

The major turns of the story from here you can likely hash out for yourselves, but it is the details that will surprise you. Sam cares for a gawky but vivacious teenager (Kerry Condon), a daughter from a previous marriage by his now-dead wife – this convolution is likely meant to explain the racial difference between her and Sam but also reinforces that this family unit is more about love and reliance between people who fall into each other’s care than genetics. She is a piano prodigy and, while Sam is teaching Danny the grown-up things like decency and morals, she is introducing him to equally important life elements like ice cream, and having enough fun that you end up late for dinner. You might think you know where their relationship is going, and you will be surprised.

You will also soon learn not to get attached to particular plot strands, as many get dropped once they have served one particular purpose, while others appear with scant explanation. This is Besson and director Louis Leterrier’s sense of joyful abandon (also on display in the more-fun-than-it-had-any-right-to-be action throwaway The Transporter), willing to play loose with logic in order to relish more time in the grimy Glasgow underworld, or create another opportunity for Danny to scrap.

The fights are staged by Yuen Wo-Ping, whose work on the Matrix trilogy, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill and other fight-heavy hits have made him arguably the first box-office draw from the choreographers’ ranks since Busby Berkeley. And once again he does not disappoint, providing clashes that do not merely expend time, but have shape and pacing and furious (but impeccably comprehensible) movement to them. One clash has Danny in a vicious one-on-one for several minutes inside a cramped and narrow bathroom, and you begin to think that neither participant is making any move to leave because it is too much fun to exercise their skills in this novel environment.

The joy is not right out on the surface in Unleashed – it has a serious story to tell, and much of the middle of the movie is carried not by Li’s martial arts skills, but by his tricky portrayal of a man of few words learning how to trust and express himself. It’s more winning than you would expect, and sometimes funnier, too. American audiences tend not to think of Jet Li as someone with comedic charms, but he gets to demonstrate them here.

That is where the joy lies; because everyone gets to take part in something which sounds quite preposterous in summary, but gives them room to exercise their talents to the fullest, and gets us to think beyond that summary and enjoy ourselves just by opening up our willingness to be entertained.

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Director: George Lucas
Writer: George Lucas
Producer: Rick McCallum
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits, Anthony Daniels, Temuera Morrison, Christopher Lee, with the voices of Frank Oz and James Earl Jones

By themselves the “prequels” in the Star Wars saga – The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and now Revenge of the Sith – are not a cohesive series. They serve primarily to lead us to Episodes IV, V and VI, the original trilogy which proved so major a landmark in movie entertainment, science-fiction and youth culture when they were released from 1977-1983. As entry points into this galaxy-spanning saga the prequels have been both overwhelming and obtuse, adequate appreciation of them depends on foreknowledge of which characters and events are key to the business at hand, and where said business is going.

Which is why this third episode feels like the movie writer/director George Lucas has been waiting to make all this time. At last he needs not hold back, delay or vamp his way through another movie, and can depict fully what was only spoken of in the first trilogy – the fall of the once-beautiful Republic, the extermination of the peacekeeping Jedi, the birth of the twins Luke and Leia to Anakin Skywalker’s secret bride Senator Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), and the painful transformation of Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) into the Dark Side-serving half-machine Darth Vader. And the urgency and energy with which Lucas depicts it makes it closest of all the “prequels” to being the movie fans have waited all this time to see.

“War!” screams the traditional opening title crawl, and audiences are plunged right into a desperate mission by Skywalker and his Jedi mentor Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) to rescue the Republic’s Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) from the clutches of separatist leader Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and his military enforcer General Grievous (voice of Matthew Wood). This involves flying tiny fighter craft through an indescribable tapestry of large-scale ship-to-ship combat, then infiltrating Grievous’ command ship and fighting through a legion of combat droids. The screen is filled and frantic as it often is in the new Star Wars, though undeniably impressive through this entire sequence.

Even for Jedi of Kenobi and Skywalker’s skill it is no small task, and it makes for a rollicking kickoff. Of course, if they knew Palpatine’s true intentions, they might have saved themselves the bother. We are now in the final phases of his master plan to seize complete power in the Galaxy, and all that is left is to force another vote expanding the “emergency powers” he so reluctantly accepted at the beginning of the Clone Wars, and eliminate the Jedi.

Key to both goals is the turning of Skywalker to the Dark Side of the Force, where his roiling emotions can give him power, but at the cost of his soul. Always more powerful than mature, he is already been blanching at the Jedi Council’s distrust of Palpatine and refusal to promote him through the ranks in line with his rapidly-growing skills.

Palpatine is as crafty here as he has been undermining the democracy of the Republic, playing on Skywalker’s fear for the safety of his pregnant wife and intimating that a true master of the Dark Side can even cheat death if he wishes. Skywalker, still wounded from his failure to save his mother, is dangerously curious.

This descending curtain of darkness envelopes the whole adventure despite its flashes of humor and excitement. Although Lucas is respectful enough of his family audience to keep a few of the more horrifying events off-screen, this is still the most bloody and grim Star Wars movie by any measure, not afraid to bisect bodies or show the full effects of a fiery disfigurement.

As always we bounce from planet to planet, this time to appreciate the rough and beautiful wilderness of the Wookie home planet Kashyyyk, and tremble at the intimidating heat of the volcano world Mustafar. We get dynamic action spectacles only made possible by the digital effects wizards at Industrial Light and Magic – capital ships the size of cities gliding by each other and delivering broadsides like an outer space Master and Commander, or the floating pods in the Senate Chamber being flung through the air like giant hockey pucks.

And another menagerie of new creatures and vehicles is paraded before us, in that Vegas buffet style where so much space is given over to so many varieties, the hope is at least a few will be worth our attention. But the time comes when yet another bizarre alien, yet another droid design, does less to inspire our imagination and more to pummel our ability to focus. For all these prequels Lucas has been mindful to a fault of merchandising, to the extent that characters get their second in the spotlight even at the expense of narrative momentum, and action sequences seem padded in order to better show their potential as levels in video games.

That is not as much the case here, Episode III has less fat on its epic running time than both its predecessors. Perhaps, again, it is because finally there’s so much to accomplish and so little time left in which to do it.

The movie’s greater intensity benefits its characters, who are otherwise flatly written and indifferently directed as usual. The most dynamic performance is once again given by an entirely digital character, Yoda (voiced, as always, by Muppet-master Frank Oz), who gets more chances to show off his lightsaber skills. Sadly, the preponderance of dialogue he has shows that his bass-ackwards speaking style is better suited for vague philosophical musings than for urgent exposition.

Grievous, too, is an interesting character; seemingly only eyes, a heart, and a set of wheezing lungs left behind thick droid armor. Apparently more is told of his violent history in the Cartoon Network’s Clone Wars series. I cannot help but think the only time Lucas really pays close attention to the flesh-and-blood actors is when he is wishing he could grab a mouse and yank their arm to just where he wants it. Again they are wooden and hesitant, as if unsure what is due to be painted over the blue box within which they are trying to emote.

There is ignorant fraudulence to his romantic dialogue and lazy contradiction elsewhere. “Only a Sith deals in absolutes! Kenobi spits at Skywalker when his pupil wheels out the old you’re-either-with-me-or-against-me bit, but minutes later Kenobi is arguing “The Chancellor is evil!” without a hint of irony. Yoda, too, has a bit of flim-flam about how Jedi aren’t supposed to miss loved ones (since it’s a path to the Dark Side – everything is a path to the Dark Side with him), then watch later as he tells a couple of Wookies how much he is going to miss them.

Of course as an audience member I wouldn’t be so moved to nitpick, so yearning for these easy little problems to be fixed, if this movie, and the cumulative effect of the now six-movie Star Wars cycle, had not so profoundly inspired and entertained me over the years. Revenge of the Sith is the worthiest addition to the canon to come along in a generation, an explosive and expansive pop space opera deserving of its brand, and I know just how good an Episode III it is by how eager I was after viewing to get right on to Episode IV

Kingdom of Heaven
Director: Ridley Scott
Writer: William Monahan
Producer: Ridley Scott
Stars: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Liam Neeson, Marton Csokas, Brendan Gleeson, Edward Norton

In Spartacus, after a great battle Stanley Kubrick panned languidly over an extraordinary composition of the grotesque dead. Although there was blood and severed limbs everywhere, its stillness and exactitude made it painterly, even beautiful.

In Kingdom of Heaven, there is a similar tableau; but in this one, nature takes its course and the scavenger birds show up for their meal.

Solemn, serious, sparse almost to a fault, this sword-clanging epic from director Ridley Scott dares to address that diciest of historical subjects – the Crusades in the Middle East, and the battles for the “Holy Land” whose passion still inflames our world today. It does so neither condoning nor condemning Christians or Muslims as a people, but by showing how claims of spirituality can cloak simple savage ambition, and the work of impassioned fanatics of any stripe can lead to tragedy for all.

We open in France, where a blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom, his elfin features beginning to harden intriguingly here) has little to live for following his infant’s death and wife’s suicide. A knight named Godfrey (Liam Neeson), weary from the Crusades, introduces himself as Balian’s father, indicating that his congress with the boy’s mother wasn’t exactly violent, but wasn’t exactly consensual either.

Godfrey invites him to come to Jerusalem, where his illegitimacy will not prevent him from inheriting Godfrey’s title and lands. By taking part in this Holy War, Balian thinks, perhaps he can earn passage out of Hell for his wife’s soul, or at least some sign of what God wants from him in this world.

It is this mindset which dominates the movie’s protagonists – they are pragmatic men, accustomed to self-reliance and seeing a measurable return for their efforts, and disdaining self-delusion in all its forms. For them, the walls of Jerusalem do not pulse with spiritual power, but they surround a place where there is opportunity to make something of yourself. The danger is that not everyone sees it that way.

There is a fragile peace now, with the leprosy-afflicted King Baldwin (Edward Norton, hidden behind gauzy robes and a silver mask) restraining the ambitious knights and keeping the conquered Jerusalem open to all faiths, while the great Muslim warrior Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) roams outside, able to raise 200,000 soldiers at a blink, though not necessarily eager to. It is suggested that were these two rulers able to command from a vacuum, Jerusalem might become a new kind of kingdom of peace, and an inspiration to the world. But on both sides were men for whom compromise is a threat to their faith.

Behind Baldwin, eagerly watching his rapid passage to the grave, is Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas), who anticipates the throne for himself, since he had the foresight to marry the King’s sister (Eva Green). He and his firebrand accomplice Reynald (Brendan Gleeson) see goading the Muslims into war as the path to greater power. They bark “Blasphemy!” at any suggestion that their better-numbered, desert-bred opponents might win. “An army that marches in Jesus’ name is invincible!” they boast, and I remember the scene in Gone with the Wind where the Southerners puffed their chest out and declared that the number of cannons the North has doesn’t matter to a gentleman.

Balian, true to Jerusalem’s characterization as a land of opportunity, uses his warrior skills and strong sense of ethics to rapidly evolve from bastard blacksmith to knight to nobleman to commanding general, and eventually must mastermind a seemingly impossible defense of the city against Saladin’s army. He is a capable and cunning swordsman in many fights we see prior to the climax, but it’s this final epic clash where real battlefield ingenuity comes into play.

We have seen enough swords crossed, arrows hailed and castle walls breached by now to think there is little new or novel to bring to the table, but to the filmmakers’ credit we do get some fantastic wrinkles here, including what must be an early, lethal application of trigonometry and an inventive foil for rolling siege towers. Scott not only zooms in close enough to see the blood spray as he so thrillingly did in Gladiator, he pulls back and lets you see the battle from the opposing generals’ viewpoints, right down to when it is time to break for the night and what you do with the day’s bodies.

But Kingdom of Heaven is about more than just massing troops, it is about the clash of motives that lead to this tragic conflagration. In depicting this, screenwriter William Monahan uses an almost-poetically spare form of dialogue. Every character states without hesitation or excess verbiage where they stand and what they intend. For persuasion they use simple syllogisms, so frequently that I wondered why Jerusalem’s defenders cheered so at Balian’s rallying pre-battle speech, when he does little more than tell them that if they do not fight, they die anyway.

This self-seriousness veers dangerously close to self-parody, 90 percent of the characters don’t so much as crack a smile, and it is a burden on the actors to involve us emotionally. Jeremy Irons plays the Marshall with the impossible job to keep the city’s peace, and he can whip up fervor and life from anything, bless him. And Gleeson’s lionish war fever is captivating. But a less technically-skilled actor like Bloom, for all his screen charisma, must fight to avoid being a mere cipher. He cannot roar and grip the screen the way Russell Crowe did in Gladiator, so he fades into what must be said is a rather stunning tapestry.

The photography by John Mathieson and the location work in Spain and Morocco is lavish, dynamic and fresh – we think of the 12th century as a grimy and unenlightened time but just by the design of the sets and costumes we see that civilization was indeed flourishing and advancing in some parts of the world. It amplifies the tragedy to see what centuries of war will wreak on this unique multicultural place.

Distraction must be noted from the musical department – Harry Gregson-Williams’ score is both relentless, unmemorable and patchwork, slapping in extra cuts from other movies as diverse as The 13th Warrior and Blade II. What is thought to be gained by this is unknown but directors have fallen in love with their temp tracks before and this could very well be what happened here.

Whether it is accurate to history I leave it to others to judge, as entertainment Kingdom of Heaven is professional, thought-provoking, confident in its epic scope and respectful of its audience. Given the challenges of its subject, in the end I would call its square earnestness a virtue, and part of what makes it refreshingly adult.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Director: Garth Jennings
Writers: Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the book by Douglas Adams
Producers: Nick Goldsmith, Jay Roach, Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Jonathan Glickman
Stars: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, John Malkovich, Anna Chancellor, and the voices of Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman

I should start by saying I very nearly brought a towel with me to watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the adaptation of Douglas Adams’ book series/radio play/TV miniseries/computer game. If you understand what that means then you know I have anticipated this movie for a long time, and whether my opinion comes from the perspective of distressed fanboy or simply a disappointed moviegoer I will leave to you to judge.

But what has arrived on screen after decades of development is an awkward bad marriage of slavish devotion and blockbuster audience whiplash. While some segments of the book are realized and reproduced word for cheeky word and will get their deserved laughs of recognition, the story and characterizations gyrate away from their natural shape out of a desire to be more conventional, more well-loved.

What makes the Guide series special is that it does not try so hard to be loved – it is eccentric, slightly anarchic, willing to pursue bizarre tangents and in teasing love with humanity’s petty foibles and arrogance. And its protagonist, Arthur Dent, is no classic hero, but an uneasy grump sure that the universe is out to get him, and never more surprised than when he learns it actually is.

This is not the stuff you make a Star Wars-sized movie out of, and yet you either must spend that amount of money or submit to the staples-and-cardboard ethos of the TV miniseries. It’s a devil’s bargain, because the movie is whimsical and amazing to look at – the Jim Henson Creature Shop-designed Vogons are like 8-foot Dickensian toads re-enacting Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, while the Heart of Gold spaceship our heroes travel on looks like what might happen if the Sharper Image catalog featured a spaceship designed by a light-hearted madman.

In exchange Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman from the British original of The Office) is now more of an Everyman Doofus, a likable nebbish who just needs the courage to be more daring and spontaneous. In the world of Clever Screenwriting this is called creating a “character arc”, and the whole story now must be bolted to this narrow definition of emotional growth.

His fear caused him to blow it with an amazing girl he met at a party named Tricia McMillan (Zooey Deschanel). They charmed each other, then she invited him to drop everything and take a spontaneous trip to Madagascar with her.

In the real world we might consider it rational and cautious of Arthur not to quit his job and flit off to Africa with someone he just met an hour ago, but here it is presented as an impeachable feat of spinelessness, and he loses Tricia to a swaggering maniac who says he’s from outer space (Sam Rockwell).

But social failings are about to be of little consequence, as one Thursday morning Arthur wakes up to find that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a bypass. To make matters worse, his best friend Ford (Mos Def) appears to tell him that – despite the best efforts of the dolphins to warn us – the entire planet Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a bigger bypass.

Ford is actually an alien, a traveling researcher for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a tongue-in-cheek repository of essential information that has the words “Don’t Panic” on the cover), and is a practiced hand at inter-spatial ride-thumbing. Out of friendship he saves Arthur’s life, and the two soon rendezvous with the Heart of Gold, the experimental craft stolen by none other than Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, who just happens to be that jerk from the party. And Tricia’s there too, along with a depressed robot named Marvin (physical performance by Warwick Davis, voice by Alan Rickman).

This extraordinary coincidence is explained by the ship’s use of the Infinite Improbability Drive, which can whisk you to any point in any universe simply by calculating exactly how unlikely it is that you would spontaneously be whisked there. Extreme coincidences are a side effect, as is the occasional bout of turning into a sofa.

The actors fare only as well as they have anything to latch on to. Freeman plays the re-imagined Dent with sincerity but the character’s inherent one-dimensionality leaves a void. Deschanel is charismatic and as easy to fall for as ever. Mos Def doesn’t look like he was given much more specific than to be wacky, he is the most underrated of rappers-turned-actors but in laboring to be funny with what each individual situation calls for his performance fails to achieve cohesion.

Most exhilarating is Rockwell as Beeblebrox. The job of the President of the Galaxy is not to wield actual power, but to simply be outrageous and entertaining enough to keep attention away from the real powerbrokers. Beeblebrox, who has two heads, three arms and a criminal record, fits the bill, and Rockwell (long overlooked in everything from Galaxy Quest to Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) is the movie’s most consistently dynamic loose screw. His Beeblebrox is more of a coked-up savant than the scheming playboy-adventurer of the books, but it suits the needs of this particular plot.

Eventually the adventure turns towards the real purpose of life on Earth, and the answer to the so-called Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. “You’re not going to like it,” warns Deep Thought (voiced by Helen Mirren), the super-computer who spent a few million years thinking of the answer.

This is in keeping with Adams’ work, but there are also some new wrinkles and diversions, including a religious zealot named Humma Kavula (John Malkovich), who has his own intentions with Deep Thought. The Vogons also get quite a bit more to do, possibly because so much loving work went in to realizing them.

I don’t mind this new material by itself – Adams himself altered the story with each medium it visited – and director Garth Jennings (of the British music video directing duo Hammer & Tongs) does let the movie’s hair down for a few imaginative flourishes. But in the final analysis it doesn’t have all that much to do with anything except to create extra scenes where our heroes run around ducking behind things while being shot at. And thus taking up so much of an already-breezy running time, material that might help us understand the story and its spirit is rushed, frantically incomprehensible, or muddy and buried under Joby Talbot’s over-emphatic musical score.

Non-fans may end up wondering what all the fuss was about. Non-fans may also wonder why the movie makes such a big deal about towels. The Guide provides a perfectly entertaining and accurate explanation, it’s just not in this movie, which is kind of an outrage. The only reason I can think why is that the filmmakers thought it was worth the sacrifice to make room for a few more seconds of something non-fans would want to see, like explosions. But if the result is as confusing and inconsistent as this version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has ended up being, I fear people aren’t likely to enjoy it anyway even with the explosions.

Kung Fu Hustle
Director: Stephen Chow
Writers: Stephen Chow, Tsang Kan Cheong, Chan Man Keung, Lola Huo
Producers: Stephen Chow, Chui Po Chu, Jeff Lau
Stars: Stephen Chow, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Leung Siu Lung, Huang Sheng Yi, Chan Kwok Kwan, Lam Tze Chung, Dong Zhi Hua, Chiu Chi Ling, Xing Yu, Feng Xiao Gang

First off, I don’t want to hear any more of this guff about how violence isn’t funny. Violence is hilarious – anyone who says otherwise never saw a Road Runner cartoon.

Filmmaker/Hong Kong comedy superstar Stephen Chow has seen a lot of Road Runner cartoons, as well as a lot of movies – especially kung fu movies. He has clearly seen enough of them to understand what can be fundamentally silly about them. When you have two people observing a fight and the dialogue goes: “What’s that! The Toad style from the Kang Tun School?”, followed by, “Oh no!”, if you can’t see what is funny about that there’s no hope for you.

Previous Chow films like God of Cookery and Shaolin Soccer have proved so crazily unusual and popular that they have given rise to a new genre in Hong Kong filmmaking, one whose name is literally translated as “nonsense”. Kung Fu Hustle is a delirious collision of nonsense, cartoon humor and martial arts, a work so refreshing and giddy it totally lacks for comparison or adequate description.

What story there is revolves around a turf war between the fearsome Axe Gang (natty dressers named for their weapon of choice) and the residents of Pig Sty Alley, so poor and destitute as to previously be beneath the gang’s notice. But a street hustler named Sing (Chow), posing with his best friend (Lam Tze Chung) as Axes in order to scam free drinks and haircuts, inadvertently trigger a brawl.

The residents of Pig Sty Alley, particularly three working-class heroes named Coolie (Xing Yu), Tailor (Chiu Chi Ling) and Donut (Dong Zhi Hua), prove surprisingly adept at beating back the previously insurmountable Axes, and so we are off on an escalating series of showdowns where one side roundly defeats the others’ champions, so they dig up new and better champions, seize the advantage, and so on. Eventually Sing, an expert in picking locks, is sent by the Axes to a psychiatric ward to break out a legendary warrior called The Beast (Leung Siu Lung), who, it is said, studied kung fu so intensely he went insane. “The slippers are kind of creepy”, Sing notes on producing the weird and surprisingly genial Beast, “but he’ll clean up real good.”

The Axes are led by Brother Sum (Chan Kwok Kwan), who dances suavely with himself – the other Axes dance in unison with him, probably because he has a short temper and likes killing. His frustration with Pig Sty Alley is commendably forthright – “We’re the bad guys! We should be doing the asskicking! Not the other way around!”

The Alley is ruled over by the fearsome Landlady (Yuen Qiu) and Landlord (Yuen Wah) – the Landlady is a tyrant in a nightgown with a perpetual cigarette burning, the Landlord strolls drunkenly around the alley in Hefner-inspired silk pajamas, peeping on girls. Then Landlady beats him. Eventually they’ll trade in their sleep gear and show what they are really capable of in some of the loudest, most flexible polyester leisure wear the world of cinema has ever seen.

Yuen Qiu and Yuen Wah were both members of “The Seven Little Fortunes”, the famed Peking Opera troupe that also included young Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung (the latter here assisting Matrix and Crouching Tiger legend Yuen Wo Ping with choreography), and Yuen Wah started his film career as Bruce Lee’s stunt double, which surely deserves some merit badge. They are among many aging legends of classic Hong Kong cinema who get to shine once again here, some poking fun at their past roles, others just having a swell time.

It’s driven by the impeccable and anarchic sensibilities of Chow, who uses goofy large-scale digital effects with just as much comfort as he does old-fashioned shtick. Watch the precise build he gives to a hilarious sequence involving three knives and a basket of snakes – it’s like something you would see in a Laurel and Hardy short, if Laurel and Hardy had ever tried to become assassins.

Compared to the action comedy of Chan, who works more with the perpetual-motion-geometry of a Buster Keaton and the dynamic physical invention of a Gene Kelly, Chow’s work is less innately jaw-dropping but a lot more dependent on pacing and contrast. Again we come back to the Road Runner example – what’s funny is how you can get laughs just as big from the most bombastic violence as you can from the doomed, still silence right beforehand, as the coyote’s pupils narrow to tiny dots and he can see the end coming. The two extremes are dependent on each other, and Chow makes that philosophy work from the fighting to the crazy-quilt musical score by Raymond Wong.

Those who sniff that “wire-fu” is bad because it is “unrealistic” will likely not be amused by bodies tumbling through the air like soda cans or a musical instrument that can kill (as well as do something most unfortunate to a stray cat). And it must be said that comedy is the hardest genre to translate, so not every gag plays here like it might for the home crowd – though credit is due to the subtitle writers for the breezy, self-mocking way they capture the interplay. But Kung Fu Hustle is both a celebration of and a prankish assault on a genre that left realism behind long ago, it is no more part of the equation than it is when Elmer Fudd walks off a cliff but doesn’t fall until he looks down.

The Interpreter
Director: Sydney Pollack
Writers: Story by Martin Zellman & Bryan Ward, Screenplay by Charles Randolph, Scott Frank, Steven Zaillian
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Kevin Misher
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Jesper Christensen, Yvan Attal, Byron Utley, George Harris, Earl Cameron

You might not have predicted it before, but in The Interpreter we discover to our pleasure that Sean Penn and Sydney Pollack make for an ideal actor/director collaboration. Both are defined by their exactitude and attention to detail – as Tobin Keller, a Secret Service agent clinging to his work for a respite of sane routine, Penn doesn’t just recite the expository dialogue about the shambles of his personal life and leave it to the set dressers make up his office to show he slept on the couch there. His stiff body posture, the way his shirt wrinkles, everything is adjusted just so and we get that extra little breath of authenticity.

The same goes for Pollack, whose best work as a director comes when he is unobtrusive, eschewing flash, and efficiently thorough. In this story of murder and conspiracy at the United Nations, he finds plenty of opportunities for pleasing detail, even winning the unique privilege of shooting in and around the actual U.N. building.

There’s an inimitable authority to the General Assembly Hall, one believes that the world can be re-shaped in this room without the room having to spell it out for us. Darius Khondji, one of the best cinematographers alive, shoots it in a way that’s all the more beautiful for how little it calls attention to itself, unlike his more colorful work in movies like Se7en and The City of Lost Children. But all of that patient professionalism cannot overcome a fundamentally sloppy story and a fatal casting miscalculation.

Keller is in charge of investigating a threat to a foreign dignitary, the dictator of a fictional African nation. As a teacher, “President” Zuwanie (Earl Cameron) inspired a revolution with his idealism, but as the years passed he gradually turned genocidal despot, killing an awful lot of people and really disappointing everyone else. He’s set to come to New York to address the General Assembly, where it is presumed he will make a play to hold onto power by dismissing mass slaughter as a fight against terrorists and promising to look into democratic reform just as soon as he can get around to it.

But a U.N. interpreter Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman), one of those people on the other ends of the headphones every ambassador has pressed against one ear, overhears a sinister conversation while grabbing something from her booth late one night. It’s whispered, and it’s in Ku, an African dialect primarily spoken in Zuwanie’s country, where she just happened to grow up. And she thinks she knows what they’re talking about when they say “The Teacher will not leave this room alive”.

Agent Keller finds it unlikely that, of all the places you could go, two conspirators would choose to conspire in a room full of microphones in one of the most guarded buildings in the world, and do so in a language few people but Silvia would understand. I find it pretty unlikely, too, and of all the things the movie endeavors to explain it never quite sells that single inciting incident.

He thinks she is lying about something, and she is, and so the question is – what does she know about Zuwanie’s enemies that she’s not telling, and why? This requires Kidman to behave in all sorts of contradictory ways, and I wonder if the movie’s biggest problem is that she is in it at all.

She’s given a few performances that I have really admired, but more often than not her own version of acting exactitude looks like trying with great intensity to show us how hard it is to do what she is doing. With her look-how-hard-I-studied African accent and nearly immobile face (she has little left but her eyelids to emote with), it’s hard enough to find something in her to empathize with. But when so much about her history and motives are kept secret it becomes nearly impossible, and we are left wondering why the movie has thrust her forward as our protagonist.

Penn’s Secret Service agent would have served the movie much better in the central role, as we could have plugged more fully into his desperate race to unravel everyone’s motives and understand her agenda. In one frightening and tense set piece, we watch as Secret Service agents around town find, to their bewilderment, that all of the subjects they have been tailing have converged on the same downtown city bus, even though none of them have met before. Keller and his quietly-supportive partner Woods (an impressive dressed-down turn from Catherine Keener) stand impotently by their walkie-talkies, sure something terrible is about to happen but with only seconds to figure out what it is and issue orders.

Because Kidman is the bigger star, The Interpreter is contorted out of its most effective form so that audiences can watch her be threatened and frightened and determined and pretty. There are also long stretches where she and Penn get to debate the merits of the U.N. and diplomacy versus force, punishment versus forgiveness. These are conversations with an important place in this world, but these characters often seem to find them more interesting than, well, the looming assassination threat against a head of state. Maybe permission to shoot in the building came at a price.

Pollack whips up some great scenes out of it all – Zuwanie’s arrival as choreographed by the security detail crackles with verisimilitude, and I liked subtle touches like the rainbow of nationalities and accents Keller has to navigate among the U.N.’s staffers. It gives The Interpreter heft and care a young director would have ignored. But even a filmmaker of his skill, and an actor of Sean Penn’s chameleonic gifts, cannot hide the miscalculations that skunk its chances of being a truly first-rate piece of grown-up cinematic intrigue.

Melinda and Melinda
Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Producer: Letty Aronson
Stars: Radha Mitchell, Chloë Sevigny, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Ferrell, Amanda Peet, Jonny Lee Miller, Brooke Smith, Wallace Shawn, Larry Pine

There’s a moment in Melinda and Melinda where a character regards their reflection in the mirror and we know exactly what they are about to berate themselves over. They never say it, but they don’t have to – another character already did, just in a different version of the story.

And it’s that it is two characters we would hardly imagine as reflections of each other, and that they are heading towards destinations which, though not the same, certainly pass a few of the same landmarks along the way, which makes Woody Allen’s latest movie his most involving in years. It is also many other things – sloppy, thought-provoking, delicate, maddeningly-obvious, well-written and badly-written. How much more exciting it is to take in, then, than another exhausted and minor farce like Small Time Crooks.

Over dinner, two playwrights argue over whether life is essentially tragic or comic. The comedic playwright (Wallace Shawn, settling in for another long and profound meal) argues that life is tragic, otherwise people wouldn’t need the release of his comedies. And the tragedian (Larry Pine) counters that if life were not inherently comedic, audiences wouldn’t recognize it in his friend’s comedies, which is why no one comes to see his tragedies. One of their tablemates throws out a challenge: to interpret something that happened to some “friends” not long ago – an unexpected guest named Melinda (Radha Mitchell) crashed a dinner party and, subsequently, the lives of those at the party.

Each playwright then spins their version of the tale – the comic who thinks life is tragic doesn’t see how this story could end any way but comedically, and vice-versa. And while both stories deal with much of the same subject matter as they cut back and forth, they demonstrate that all can be either funny or sad. Infidelity, neurosis, broken homes, people who drink too much, lies, suicide – all either funny or sad, depending on how you see it.

In the “tragic” half, Melinda is a pill-popping wreck whose boredom with being a “doctor’s wife” caused her to fall for a photographer and lose custody of her children. After surviving even deeper scars resulting from that mistake – her friends tell her they would prefer not to hear anymore and she replies “Why not? It only gets worse from there…” – she has come to bunk with her old schoolmates Laurel (Chloë Sevigny) and Lee (Jonny Lee Miller). Lee was the most handsome, talented and charismatic actor at their school. Laurel was the Park Avenue Princess who won him. Now he’s a monstrously self-centered alcoholic waiting for success to cure what ails him, and she devotes herself, between lunches and shopping, to finding happiness, and a man, for Melinda.

In the “comic” iteration, Melinda is the downstairs neighbor, also popping too many pills and smarting over a divorce from a doctor, who stumbles in on Susan (Amanda Peet), a struggling independent filmmaker trying to raise money from a real estate billionaire (David Aaron Baker). He likes the script, he likes Susan, but he would rather have a “name” for a particular role rather than her dubiously-skilled husband Hobie (Will Ferrell), whose contribution to every role is to decide it would be more interesting if they limped. Hobie feels increasingly shut out by his wife, and in spending more time with Melinda, realizes he would very much like to see her happier – just not with anyone else.

It’s the comic half which will be more familiar to Woody Allen fans, and the sight of the towering Ferrell channeling Allen’s miserable nebbish mannerisms is unsettling at first. We have seen it so many times before, the jazz-lover who’s somehow both charming and wretched, unimpressed by other peoples’ designated status symbols, bewildered by women who can’t satisfactorily explain why they do not want to have sex with him right now, and hopelessly, comically drawn to a whirlwind of a neurotic blond. It’s as regular as the plain typeface credits which have opened every one of his movies for three decades.

Which is why, even though it is the stronger and more consistent of the two halves, that it gains considerably with the contrast of the other. The comic Melinda is sunny, beguiling and sensual – watch the drastic way Hobie’s interaction at the racetrack with her changes when she reveals her erotic sensitivity to touch.

The tragic Melinda is a chain-smoking shambles (the sort of bull-in-a-china-shop knockout for which you usually ring up Judy Davis); can’t keep her thoughts intact, can’t find comfort or safety anywhere, and constantly duels with herself over whether it is the dark acts in her past which haunt her or an indelible darkness within herself. When we see the barest chance for happiness appear on the horizon, already we are hurting because while we cannot see how yet, we know it won’t last.

Each resonance between the two deepens the mystery, as each half visits the same candlelit bistro and the same New York society idea of the perfect catch – a dentist who plays bridge and hikes. The funny version is indeed funny and the sad version is indeed sad. Woody Allen invites us to divine – why?

It’s a potent reminder that he is one of the few filmmakers who can deliver both, and that only someone of his skill could take a conceit so pedantic and dredge real emotion from it. It’s like after years of people begging him to hide his pretensions and be the old, funny Woody again, he has resolved contrarily to be himself but dusted off the old tools anyway.

Some of them have undeniably gone rusty – Melinda and Melinda will frustrate and annoy you. Many of its characters have little time to develop more than one trait. You may weary, as I did, of Lee’s relentless obnoxiousness and check your watch when Hobie and Susan take an overlong trip to the Hamptons primarily to give Hobie new categories of things to complain about.

But you will also get to appreciate Mitchell’s expert work – her two Melindas achieve such distinctive life you’ll swear the tragic Melinda seems taller and skinner, like Mitchell can jut her cheekbones out the way other actors change their posture. And you will get to appreciate the elegant way the tragedy finally resolves, as we watch the characters do what comes inevitably and naturally to them and our heart breaks.

Melinda and Melinda has no answer for you about what life is really like. But one thing that is common in both ideas is that we are drawn to those who really live as we are drawn to life itself. We love, hate and need the brightly-burning Melindas as we need both laughter and tears.

The Jacket
Director: John Maybury
Writers: Story by Tom Bleecker and Marc Rocco, Screenplay by Massy Tajedin
Producers: Peter Guber, George Clooney, Steven Sodergbergh
Stars: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Daniel Craig, Kelly Lynch, Brad Renfro

The Jacket is a good movie with a great movie sitting just out of its reach. It is resolutely the sum of its parts when you yearn for it to be more. Where you sought deeper emotional closure you find only the pleasing-but-square termination of plot lines, and in the jungle of details you hoped would form some richer tapestry you find only irrelevancies. I can’t really share which details are so irrelevant, as it would take away from whatever mystery the movie has to offer, so I will endeavor instead to just get you off and running as the movie does.

Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) is an ex-soldier who suffers from bouts of amnesia and delusions, due to a gunshot in the head received during the first Gulf War. It rendered him clinically-dead, briefly. In 1992 he’s hitchhiking in the northeast and happens upon a broken-down truck driven by a drunken wreck of a mother (Kelly Lynch). He repairs it and befriends the little daughter, Jackie (Laura Marano), who looks as if she’s had to take responsibility for this family unit long before she should have.

Then, further up the road, he thumbs an ill-fated lift from a wanted criminal (Brad Renfro), who shoots a patrolman dead and pins the crime on the befuddled Jack.

He is sent to a care facility for the criminally-insane, where he catches the eye of the sinister Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson). Seeing him as beneath any human consideration, Becker “volunteers” Jack for a bit of mad scientist therapy involving a radical drug cocktail, a restraining harness (the “jacket” of the title), and a dark morgue drawer. What this is meant to accomplish he is rather vague on, but he’s not above changing his medical opinion about how long to leave people in the drawer if they annoy him.

While inside Jack experiences violent hallucinations, the return of long-lost memories, and then – something else entirely. He seems to drop back into the outside world, only the year is 2007 and he has no idea where the intervening 15 years went. Here he re-encounters Jackie, all grown-up in the very comely form of Keira Knightley. Her life has not gone well since that day at the roadside, but she does know one thing – Jack Starks’ dead body was found on New Years’ Day, 1993.

How and why Jack has seemingly come unstuck in time and/or back from the dead I won’t get into, although it seems fair to reveal that it only happens when he is locked in the drawer, so as abusive and uncomfortable as the treatment is he schemes to get more of it, even lying to a concerned doctor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) about the causes of his injuries.

With his great syrupy-sad eyes and whippet body Adrien Brody is an ideal actor for this sort of role – he has an ability to seem at once both animalistically determined and vulnerable to any stiff breeze. We don’t ever get to know much about Jack Starks other than the basic data the deposits him into the plot – he means well, has gaps in his memory and can tinker with engines. But with Brody in the role we get both the suffering and such an urgent need to understand what’s going on that you half expect Jack to be just as disappointed as we are by the flat purpose underneath it all.

The other characters are similarly given the pencil-sketch treatment; by casting talented actors director John Maybury contributes heavily to tension and sympathy the script might not otherwise provide. Worth particular commendation is Daniel Craig as fellow inmate Rudy MacKenzie – a creepy tightrope act playing a person who is crazy, believes he isn’t, but once in awhile will fake it for the right reasons.

Knightley, she of the porcelain-pure looks, has made a meteoric rise through the ranks of starlets and takes a smart step in between Jerry Bruckheimer productions with a dressed-down role here. She plays the troubled grown-up Jackie as more than just eyeliner and cigarettes, in the time we spend with her she convincingly carries us through all sorts of extremities of mood. She doesn’t strike a false note on the way to her eventual feelings about Jack.

There are some of the flashy quick cuts, digital bleeds and other gizmo trickery which is so in vogue these days, but on the whole they’re not overdone and the movie has a rich look to it. The locations are suitably chilly in keeping with the perpetual snow – this is one of the grimmer recent movies to be set prominently during the holiday season – and there’s an effectively modern score by rock musician/producing god Brian Eno.

What is perhaps most misleading is the idea that this movie is a thriller at all – it’s not so much a jump-out-of-your-seat ride or a race against time (time being a somewhat fluid thing here) as it is a slow-bubbling mystery that just wouldn’t fit together without the intimations of time travel. Everyone whose job it is to escort you from the beginning to the end does appreciable if unspectacular work – it’s where they are escorting you to that will ultimately let you down.

Sin City
Directors: Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, with special guest director Quentin Tarantino
Writers: Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller
Producers: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Elizabeth Avellan
Stars: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Michael Madsen, Jamie King, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Nick Stahl, Marley Shelton, Arie Verveen, Devon Aoki, Alexis Bledel, Rutger Hauer

This is what the technology is for. Not for superfluous Burly Brawls or so Greedo can shoot first – with Sin City, an adaptation of Frank Miller’s revered graphic novel series, Robert Rodriguez has made the best and purest argument yet that the tools of digital cinema have a worthy place in the filmmaker’s arsenal.

All you have to do is just imagine the movie made any other way.

Lurid and atmospheric are barely adequate words to describe the world of Sin City, which is a world more than it is a movie with a start-to-finish plot. It’s a world that crashes film noir clichés into pulp icons and then shoots nitrous into the wreckage.

It’s probably the only post-Pulp Fiction film to truly understand the bones of that movie and successfully emulate its structure. And yet the graphic novel series started three years before Pulp, and with Tarantino here as a guest director for a funny and deeply strange scene in a car, you could easily get lost in chicken-egg postulations. It doesn’t really matter, they go hand in hand. They’re all part of the same mojo that looks backwards for style and gesture and forward for pop storytelling rhythms that shatter the boundaries of a reality not big enough for it to breathe in.

Some actors belong in black-and-white. We used to have Bogarts to remind us of this but nowadays we don’t even get the chance to find out. Now we know Clive Owen could have been one of those actors. He plays Dwight, a wanted killer in red sneakers who just can’t seem to resist being helpful no matter how high the bodies start to pile up. His story is about the waitress (Brittany Murphy) he befriends and all the things he ends up having to do to the head of her violent ex-boyfriend Jacky Boy (Benicio Del Toro).

There’s plenty of other stories to tell, including that of the hulking brute Marv (Mickey Rourke), whose tolerance for pain is beyond measure. He’ll devote all of it to avenging a woman (Jamie King) who was nice to him one night. And there’s Hartigan (Bruce Willis), the aging detective with a bad heart whose life becomes a lonely and painful quest to protect one little girl, even when she’s not so little anymore.

And looming over it all is the Roark family – the Senator patriarch (Powers Boothe), the Cardinal brother (Rutger Hauer), and the son (Nick Stahl) whose bad habits make life difficult for them all. The original crime fiction writers looked up from the gutter and painted us a picture of absolute corruption; where everyone sinned, but only people with nothing could afford to be honest about it. Those in power had hypocrisy to cover their workaday sins, and money and influence to stay ahead of the truly vile stuff. Once we know the Roarks control the cops and the wealth of Basin City, we understand the rest instinctively.

As with last year’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sin City was filmed almost exclusively on a bare green stage, with the buildings and backgrounds added in later via computer. It’s largely in black-and-white, although there’s flashes of color – a pair of blue eyes, the spatter of blood or a woman’s dress in the reddest red you could imagine, and of course the skin of the appropriately named Yellow Bastard.

It suitably honors the story’s origins, as what’s behind the actors can loom and stretch dynamically to reflect the prevailing mood. There’s also, I think, the best visual marriage I’ve ever seen between the “poses” of a graphic novel frame and a moving cinematic image. In the purest sense of giving the audience what they love about graphic novels, Sin City is the best movie adaptation of one ever made.

It’s also a giant step ahead for Robert Rodriguez. His work, from El Mariachi all the way up through the Spy Kids trilogy and his embrace of digital filmmaking, has never lacked for energy or style, but often feels one step away from total anarchy. His simple love of making movies often runs away from any storytelling discipline. In channeling all of his skills to the service of faithfully adapting Miller’s work, to the extent of bringing him on board to co-direct, we get all the action and cool and explosive violence, but in such powerfully enriched surroundings.

So ambitious a work is not without its missteps. Brittany Murphy sticks out painfully from the ensemble, proving that when performing in this piece a miss is as good as a mile. And once in awhile the technique of blending time periods creates slightly-too-large ripples of dissonance, like when one character uses a car phone, or how there’s just something slightly off about the dress and attitude of Jacky Boy’s posse.

But around those flaws such unforgettable grotesqueries – who knew Elijah Wood had a smile that could make your skin crawl like that? Who would ever dream of crossing a hooker in Old Town knowing they have enforcers like the lethal Miho (Devon Aoki) protecting their turf?

Punishments that display shocking cruelty and gore, ominous moods of damnation and hopelessness, and these are our heroes. When such clear abstractions feel so right to us, when we can look at the thoroughly imaginary Sin City and say I know this place, that’s gripping and vital art, and it’s what Rodriguez and Miller have made.