Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (3/5 Stars)

It kills me how much I love you

In a way the first Sin City movie had it easy. It’s three stories dealt mainly with a dark pessimistic view of power embodied by murderous senators, bishops, and cops who importantly were all men. The heroes, like Marv (played by Mickey Rourke) who had a rule that he never hit women but felt that men were fair game for torture and murder, the all male gender of the bad guys really helped him sort out exactly who to torture and kill: the brutal violent men especially those that hurt women. The morality of the movie being clarified the movie could be as violent and gory all it wanted to both men and women. Well, maybe it was okay. There is an argument I will bring up later that may point out a chink in the armor of that logic (although I think Director Robert Rodriguez deserves the benefit of the doubt.) But at least on its face it was more okay than the titular story of this particular movie, which contains an evil manipulative woman played by Eva Green and the man named Dwight (Josh Brolin) that violently loves her. She’s a sociopath but she isn’t hurting any one physically weaker than she is (so no women, just men are killed) and her main weapon is psychological/sexual not violent (she gets other men to kill for her). So is it okay for Dwight to seek revenge by killing her? After a brief review of the movie we will have a brief discussion about violence against women in movies.

“Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” is an okay movie. It has good moments of great film noir where the digital black and white graphic novel landscape famously innovated by the original movie in 2005 is rendered beautifully and where the language of the script flows in that great Chandler-esque poetry of depression and darkness. But these are only moments and they are infrequent. The best parts have to do with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance as a suicidal gambler and the first half of the titular story as Dwight is manipulated (and he knows it) by a woman he hopelessly and pathetically loves/hates. This is great film noir stuff but the movie meanders where it should have been guaranteed more success, that is, all the hold over stories from the first movie: a prequel for Marv, a sequel for Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), and a cameo from the militant whores of Oldtown (headed by Rosario Dawson). For one thing after nine years between movies nobody looks quite the same. Bruce Willis looks downright ancient. Mickey Rourke simply does not move around like the powerhouse fighter he is supposed to be. In fact, he looks like he put on at least 50 pounds of fat. The same can be said for Rosario Dawson though her clothes (looking way out of place on her now) desperately try to hide it. Michael Clark Duncan is dead. Dennis Hasbert has replaced him with not nearly the same amount of stage presence. Finally there is Jessica Alba who looks the same but probably shouldn’t. Her character in the first movie was the object of an obsession so she was never needed to be or was anything but good looking. In this movie she becomes the protagonist of her own story on a mission of vengeance that does not make sense for the character or the actress playing the part.

Jessica Alba is not a film noir protagonist. Look at all the men; worn out battered, beaten, pathetic, and violently depressed men. They are and should be ugly blokes. Nancy Callahan, though hard drinking, enraged, and depressed, does not at all give out the same vibe. Even when she does scar up her face she still looks like she is on a fashion catwalk just this time in the sort of fetishitstic getup Catwoman made famous. This does not make sense in a film noir story told from her point of view. Film Noir mental weather shows up in the constitution of the body after awhile. Women I would think are welcome in the genre but they have got to start playing by the rules the guys play by. Lose the fashion makeup, the strict diet and exercise regimen, and grow some bad history into the eyesockets. See Noomi Rapace in the Swedish version of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Before we discuss what kind of violence against women is okay or not okay, first we have to settle the question of whether any kind of violence should ever be okay. We can expand this of course and directly ask why would we want to watch any kind of PG-13 or R rated or NC-17 movie. The debate goes back to Aristotle who suggested that the education of children should be limited to good things and should omit bad things. The fear being that children would be poorly influenced by the negative things perhaps even going so far as to try to imitate them. That should sound familiar. Censors have been saying that about movies, TV, comic books, and recently video games for a long time. Studies have not shown yet that they make kids more violent. But even if they didn’t, why watch bad things? Why don’t we just watch happy fluffy things all day instead of Film Noir a genre bereft of color, comfort and happiness?

The first reason is pragmatic. The world is in fact a dangerous PG-13 and Rated R and NC-17 place and though it is possible perhaps in some parts of the world in this particular day and age to shield one’s eyes without any consequence, if most of us did it, the opportunistic evil that is present in the world will opportunistically consume us whole. James Madison was wont to write about laws as ‘parchment barriers.’ That is to say that they were of no use unless there was a coercive force behind it. Polite suggestions do not work in the real world and as Machiavelli would remind a wise prince, being capable of anything is the first requisite in keeping power against a foe that is also capable of anything. PG-13 and R rated and NC-17 rated movies can illuminate the dangerous parts of the world in a far more informative and educational way than censored movies can and in this they are useful for the good in fighting off evil.

It should be noted that movies do not have to be documentaries in order to do this. George R.R. Martin, the writer of Game of Thrones, has defended the violence in general and the violence against women in particular in his fantasy saga a Song of Ice and Fire partly on historical grounds. His novels may be set in a completely different world but the context is drawn from an understanding of World History, particularly English Civil Wars. The saga is illuminating in its depiction of how these types of wars work and helpful in understanding parts of the present day world that have yet to modernize or have recently collapsed into a medieval mindset. But this is just the pragmatic reason.

The second reason is that Film Noir is enjoyable to watch. The Greek call it catharsis: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. This can in fact be done second hand. I like to give the example of skydiving. Falling to one’s death is not a enjoyable thing but the prospect of it does engage the body into a fight-or-flight mode where the mind enters a higher plane of activity and adrenaline is released creating a sensation of being more alive than you were before. Now imagine if there was a way where you could trick your body into creating that sensation without actually being in harm’s way. Strap a parachute on your back. Buckle yourself into a rollercoaster. Watch a violent movie. What the censors have never fully understood or more likely do not want to believe is that violent movies and video games do not provoke aggression; they are a substitute. As Freud would posit, human beings are a species driven by evolution to have several aggressive instincts. Civilization inhibits these instincts causing discontent among the people. Now it is certainly not this writer’s point of view that civilization should not do this. It needs to if we are to live together in some sort of peace, but the need to live in peace should not obscure the fact that it is natural for individuals to feel frustrated when they can’t get everything they want whenever they want it. In other words, take away our civilizing education and we are all babies, giant violent selfish babies. That is the truth.

But let us not simply make a blanket statement declaring that everything is okay to show in a movie. This, after all, is art criticism and the whole point of that is to make distinctions between good and bad movies. So in that spirit let us deliniate where violence is okay to be enjoyed. I have explored this idea before in my reviews of SuckerPunch and This is the End but to summarize the rule: a movie must ask the viewer to empathize with the victim, Or: if the viewer is to empathize with the aggressor than it is only in circumstances of equalilty. In other words, don’t be an asshole and pick on someone your own size (or bigger). With the latter we can incorporate most action classics from Jackie Chan to Quentin Tarantino into the category of good cinema. With the former we can also make a distinction from good horror films and bad horror films. In a good horror film like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the audience is asked to identify with the girl being chased around by killer maniacs. She goes through hell but she survives and has a laugh at the very end of the movie that encapsulates everything a great horror movie experience can achieve. (Honorable Mention: Sam Raimi for what he did to Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead series). This contrasts with any of the various forms of ‘torture porn’ that has saturated cinema in the last decade. These bad movies do not ask the audience to identify with the victim, but the bad guys as they torture people. That is sadistic and not good (and unnecessary given the various ways aggression can be catharsised.) Honorable mention for terrible person if not a terrible filmmaker: Lars Von Trier.

Let’s go back to Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. The question is whether Dwight, the person the movie asks us to empathize with, should retaliate violently against Eva Green. Is she equal or superior to him? What exactly happened? She seduced Dwight to kill her husband. He went ahead and did it and then she turned on him and shot him several times. He survives and seeks revenge. The story ends with Dwight killing Eva Green after she tries to seduce him for the last time. That seems okay, right? I mean she shot first, didn’t she? But it can be more complicated.

Roger Ebert had a good insight once about the way male filmmakers attempt to justify sexual violence. In his review of the 2010 remake of “I Spit on Your Grave,” he had this to say:

“This despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film "I Spit on Your Grave" adds yet another offense: a phony moral equivalency. In the original, a woman foolishly thought to go on holiday by herself at a secluded cabin. She attracted the attention of depraved local men, who raped her, one after the other. Then the film ended with her fatal revenge. In this film, less time is devoted to the revenge, and more time to verbal, psychological and physical violence against her. Thus it works even better as vicarious cruelty against women.

First, let’s dispatch with the fiction that the film is about "getting even." If I rape you, I have committed a crime. If you kill me, you have committed another one. The ideal outcome would be two people unharmed in the first place. The necessity of revenge is embedded in the darker places of our minds, and most hate speech is driven by "wrongs" invented in unbalanced minds. No one who commits a hate crime ever thinks his victim is innocent…..

…..

No, it’s the first half of the movie that’s offensive. It implicitly assigns us the POV of the men as they taunt and terrorize Jennifer in plausible ways — which are different from her killing methods, which are implausible, probably impossible, and offered and received as entertainment….”

That is to say, in order to justify what the filmmakers really want to show (and what their intended target audience wants to see) they will unrealistically exaggerate the woman’s guilt (she is a rich bitch, she stupidly spent a night alone in a secluded cabin, she used sex appeal to manipulate a man) or they unrealistically exaggerate the woman’s ability to enact revenge or both. 

In the case of “Sin City: A Dame to Kill for,” there is some of this phony moral equivalency, but I hesitate to argue that it is there because Robert Rodriguez or Frank Miller actively hate women. I think it is there because they have decided to venture into this dark aggressive instinctual territory and are embarrassed by what they found there. And they use the phony moral equivalency more as a way of evading their questionable behavior than as an excuse for it. Take the small scene in which a businessman played by Ray Liotta is cheating on his wife with a prostitute. He hates the prostitute and decides to kill her even though he doesn’t want to because he knows he can’t stop seeing her because he loves her and that will destroy his marriage and his business via the alimony. It is a powerful scene and the only thing that stops the murder is Dwight who is covertly taking pictures of the whole thing (the wife hired him to get proof of her husband’s infidelity). The moment after Dwight knocks out Ray Liotta, the prostitute takes off her fake blonde wig, speaks in a different tougher accent, and acts like she was never afraid at all even when she had a gun pointed at her head.

Why did the scene end this way? Are we the audience supposed to feel that everything that had come before it was just a lark? But in real life, don’t real men kill their real girlfriends all the time and in the same crazy, vicious, jealous and desperate way that this man just tried to kill this woman in this story? And is it not the whole point of this movie called, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” to explore that dark territory in men’s minds? And so is it not a cop out to show all the behavior leading up to the moment of truth and then afterwards argue that this type of male behavior does not affect women, to go so far as to posit that the woman was in control the entire time. To victimize women and revel in the harm created is misogynistic. We all know that. I argue to victimize women and then feel ashamed and pretend that they were not victimized may not be exactly misogynistic, but it is most definitely cowardly. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller came up to the bell of sexual violence without any encouragement or provocation. They chose to do it. They should ring the bell. And then they should take a step back and look at what they have wrought with clear eyes and ask the audience to do the same. That’s what Shakespeare would have done. That is the difference between the Swedish version of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and the inferior American remake and of course “Sin City: A Dame to Kill for” too. 

Machete Kills (3/5 Stars)

Back from the Dead with an Unexpectedly Entertaining Third Act

Writer/Director Robert Rodriguez is back with Danny Trejo as Machete, the ex-CIA, ex-FBI, ex-DEA, ex-federale turned illegal immigrant day laborer turned outlaw turned ICE agent. The character Machete by definition works better in two-minute trailers rather than two-hour movies. His main characteristics are looking like Danny Trejo (best described by one critic as, “a man who had a staring contest with the sun and won”) never dying and killing people. He had his start in a fake movie trailer accompanying Rodriguez’s zombie masterpiece “Planet Terror.” (I’m basically the only one who calls that movie a masterpiece and am trying to spread the word). Machete is a man of few words and, given Danny Trejo’s impending old age, works better when he stands still and glares and less when he actually fights people. In the end, what makes, “Machete Kills” ultimately worth seeing is a few other characters namely Michelle Rodriguez’s “She” (pronounced like “Che” of Guevera fame) and the new bad/crazy guy Mel Gibson. Unfortunately the entrances of these two characters come in the movie’s third act. Before that the movie slogs a bit in the territory of so-bad-it’s-bad before ultimately triumphing in a satisfying so-bad-it’s-good ending.

The badness of the first two acts of “Machete Kills” needs a detour into an education in the Grindhouse genre in order to fully explain. For those unacquainted a “Grindhouse” movie are B movies that promise sex and violence and nothing else. By definition these movies can’t be great in the classic sense (say ‘Citizen Kane’) but they can succeed, and some succeed spectacularly, in never being boring. Robert Rodriguez, that very underrated American treasure of a director, specializes in elevating this type of movie from B-level trash into high art (Sin City, Planet Terror). But just because they are not good in the classic sense does not mean that they automatically find themselves within the so-bad-it’s-good genre. Rodriguez doesn’t make bad movies per se. He makes good Grindhouse movies. Let’s use some of Rodriguez’s previous work as the gold standard of this type of movie we can give some guidelines to further elaborate on this tricky area of cinema. 

First the action and plot must move fast. The Grindhouse format is especially conducive to this in that plot holes are usually present. However in a good Grindhouse picture the plot hole should resemble a short cut that propels the story forward faster than it normally would in a regular picture. A great example is the ‘Missing Reel’ in Planet Terror that lands the audience in the middle of a battle thereby skipping the needless part of the enemy actually showing up to the fight. Also given that the plot does not need to make perfect sense, it might as well be sensational. “Machete Kills” involves drug cartels in jungle castles and a nuclear bomb aimed at Washington D.C. That is good so far. Unfortunately “Machete Kills” clocks in at around two hours. There is too much here and later I will give an example of what to cut. These movies really should be no more than 90 minutes.

Second, the action does not have to be realistic but it does have to be novel. In other words, it doesn’t matter how many people die or how gory it is just as long as the way they die is surprising and dare I say, clever. This is basically what makes a great Grindhouse movie fun to watch. The creative love that is put into the violence evidences something more in the maker than simply sadism. This detail is also what separates a great Grindhouse movie (like Raimi’s Evil Dead series) from the torture porn genre (Saw series). In a way that makes “Machete Kills” different from “Machete” is that there is a sizably less amount of cleverness that goes into the action sequences. In “Machete Kills” there are far too many scenes where opposing forces show up across open spaces and fire machine guns at each other. By too many scenes I basically mean more than one. There was only one in “Machete,” and it worked fantastically by itself. I suspect that because this is a sequel Rodriguez may have felt that he had to start off where he left off and started with machine guns instead of going back to the workable formula in “Planet Terror” and “Machete” of hand-to-hand combat than melee weapons than guns and than finally a big ass gun battle. “Machete” has good gags (I especially liked how Machete how defused a bomb in midair while riding it) but went on autopilot a few too many times.

Third a great Grindhouse movie has to like its women characters. By “like” I don’t mean that they have to do nice things or dress conservatively. What I mean is that there has to be more to them than just skimpy clothing and a bad attitude. Or to put it another way: it has to be a role that the actress playing it would obviously enjoy playing or at least find challenging in a professional sense. This is a particularly important guideline given the immense amount of Grindhouse and horror movies that employ their women characters to do nothing but scream and die in terrible ways. Rodriguez in general does well by his actresses, not an easy thing to do given the thin line he is walking in this genre. (Again take a look at Rose McGowan in “Planet Terror”). In “Machete Kills” I think he does well by Lady Gaga and Michelle Rodriguez who have memorable/badass fight scene. He does okay by Amber Heard who could have had more to do. But one character is not treated well and that is the sadistic bordello madame played by Sofia Vergara from TV’s Modern Family. She tries to kill Machete with her Double Ds, a type of machine gun that doubles as a bra (try not to think about where the ammo comes from). The problem is not the Double Ds. The problem is that there really is not much to the character besides that. She has no good lines and is routinely frustrated in not so clever ways in battle. Rodriguez should have just cut the whole subplot. It didn’t work and without it the movie would be the correct length.

In the “Machete” series Rodriguez has done something that is not really necessary according to my made up guidelines but is ultimately interesting to watch and that is his stunt casting. Rodriguez goes out of his way to employ actors/actresses who are unemployable due to career ending scandals. In the first movie he cast Lindsay Lohan (multiple arrests for disorderly conduct) and Steven Seagall (famously awful actor in terrible movies). In this movie we are treated to Charlie Sheen as Carlos Esteves (“Winning!”) and Mel Gibson (stuff I’m not about to write here). Unlike Lindsay and Seagall, Carlos and Mel are actually good actors and they do remarkably well playing the President of the United Stated and Crazy Bad Guy named Voz respectively. Truly Rodriguez is a kindhearted man who is always willing to give the fallen from grace a second chance to redeem themselves in movies that contain ridiculous amounts of violence and bad taste. 

There must be something to say about Rodriguez’s political consciousness. It is present in the ‘Machete’ movies even if they are just throwaway motivations for characters than actual lucid political arguments about illegal immigration and drug war policy. Still it makes an admirer wonder what Rodriguez could do if he actually attempted to make a serious movie about these topics. I’m sure he could do it. I’m also sure he would do it only if he really really wanted to do it. I can’t think of another director who seems to make movies purely for his own enjoyment and the enjoyment of his family (an example is the Spy Kids franchise. Rodriguez is the only filmmaker I know of that would make a feature length film based on the story idea of his five-year-old child.) He seems to be completely divorced from the type of greed that would induce him to make his films more mainstream or the type of awards acclaim that would make him choose more conventional subjects for his art. I like this guy a lot.  

For those of you with keen eyes you may also spy the Crazy Babysitter Twins and Rodriguez’s actual doctor (who looks like he’s lost a good deal of weight). They don’t have much to say in this movie though they were part of the group of characters taken into space on Crazy Bad Guy’s rocket ship in anticipation of the next movie. The title of that one is “Machete Kills Again…IN SPACE.” And yes I am very interested in seeing that as well. 

Machete (4/5 Stars) September 6, 2010

He knows the score. He gets the women. He kills the bad guys. 

Above all things, “Machete” is a joke. It first appeared as a fake movie trailer shown before writer/director Robert Rodriguez’s classic zombie movie “Planet Terror.” It was perhaps one of the best trailers I’ve ever seen. Among other ridiculous things the trailer promised, was the first starring role for iconic badass Danny Trejo as a Mexican day laborer who is setup and betrayed by anti-immigrant bad guys, a gun toting priest played by Cheech Marin, a threesome romp with the head bad guy’s wife and daughter, and a hell of lot of fatal revenge by machete. It ended with Trejo installing a machine gun turret on a motorcycle, jumping it off a ramp while something very explosive goes off in the background, and unloading a massive hail of bullets at the bad guys. Then the voiceover helpfully informed us that “They Just Fucked with the wrong Mexican!” Apparently I wasn’t the only one who really wanted to see that movie because here we are, two years later, with the feature length version. 



The genre of Machete is Grindhouse. It’s the kind of cheap movie that used to be shown in run down theaters and drive-ins and proudly offered little more than sex and violence (or as they say in the business, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.) Most of these movies really sucked, but the attitude of them was inspiring to several now prominent filmmakers like Tarantino and Rodriguez. Because Grindhouse movies were cheap to make and the audience was content as long as there was fighting and nudity, directors and writers (if there were any) were very free to be, let’s say, provocative. No suit from the studio was there to tell them they couldn’t do something. Thus, there are no rules of decorum in a Grindhouse movie. And this movie, Machete, is no different. The prologue consists of Machete, as a Federale in Mexico, breaking into a drug lord’s house in order to rescue a kidnapped woman. The guards are dispatched by machete. It’s a credit to Rodriguez imagination that every single one is killed in a different way. The woman, when Machete finds her, is completely naked because “it’s too hot out for clothes.” No matter, he throws her over his shoulder and proceeds to make his escape by killing more bad guys. But then the woman double-crosses Machete and shoots him. As Machete is writhing on the floor she takes a very small cell phone out of the only place you can hide something when you’re naked and relays her success. The drug lord played by Steven Seagal shows up. He chides Machete for being a righteous troublemaker, shoots the naked lady for some reason, and then brings out Machete’s wife whom he decapitates with a katana. He explains that the only honorable way for Machete to die is if he cut off his head also (because apparently this Mexican drug lord also moonlights as a samurai) but that Machete has no honor. So what Steven Seagal does is light the house on fire (remember this is the drug lord’s house). Presumably Machete escaped because three years later he is an illegal immigrant in America looking for gardening work. The movie never explains exactly how. The rest of the plot is just as ridiculous.

Almost by definition a Grindhouse movie can’t be a good movie in the ordinary sense (i.e. realistic action, believable characters, decent editing, production value) but they can succeed, and often do, in never being boring and this is what Machete, by and large, accomplishes. There are plenty of funny one-liners, gratuitous nudity, and violence which is often and outrageous. The high point of gruesomeness occurs when Machete escapes from a hospital by cutting open a bad guy’s stomach, grabbing his intestine, and using it like a rope to lower himself out a window. (Machete is not the type of guy who bothers to open windows before going out them.) When a scene is that unbelievable I don’t think it can possibly be scary. The correct reaction is WTF and lots of nervous laughter. I had the good fortune of being in an audience that appreciated the audaciousness of such a moment. They applauded and cheered. Quite frankly, I liked it too. And I must admit I also enjoyed watching incredibly hot scantily clad women striking fierce poses and shooting semiautomatic machine guns. This movie has more of that than any I’ve ever seen. We’ve got Jessica Alba, Michele Rodriguez, the Crazy Babysitter Twins, and Lindsay Lohan doing exactly that at regular intervals. A bad movie? Sure you can definitely argue that. Boring? I don’t think so. 

There are also huge political overtones in this movie. Whether it is serious or not is anyone’s guess but either way but it does do a great job of illustrating the old maxim that the best way to make somebody feel foolish is to zealously agree with them. There is a rabid anti-immigrant senator played by Robert De Niro, his corrupt corporate backer played by Jeff Fahey, and a border vigilante played by Don Johnson. Illegal aliens are compared to cockroaches and terrorists. There is a plan to build an electric fence. The Senator is afraid that Illegals will try to take over his country, and then goes on to clarify that term as Texas. And you know what? The Senator is right. The Mexicans in this movie really are organized and have been hoarding arms and munitions in preparation of a race war. At the climax of the movie, a “code” is sent out to “The Network” and every single dishwasher, gardener, and maid in the state stops working and forms an army to confront the vigilantes. They parade down the street in hysterically stereotypical tricked-out cars with hydraulics. They’re armed with guns and gardening tools. Loud Mariachi music is trumpeted in the background. Is this what were afraid of when we talk about an illegal invasion? Because that would be ridiculous. Your enjoyment of this movie will probably depend on your view of Mexican immigration in general. I tend to be more liberal when it comes to that thing. I can't say I know enough about the subject to give a truly educated argument, but on a gut level I'm at least convinced that this summer’s “anchor baby” debate was purely idiotic. Surely any woman who has the courage and spirit to hike 100 miles across a dangerous desert while pregnant should be granted citizenship on the spot. That type of backbone is what this country needs. Besides they make good tacos. 

My enjoyment of this movie was also greatly enhanced by the fact that I am a huge fan of Robert Rodriguez and am familiar with most of the actors. I loved the fact that Danny Trejo finally got a starring role. This will probably be the only one he ever gets. I fondly remember Tom Savini, the Crazy Babysitter Sisters, and the Doctor from Planet Terror and am glad they all showed up again. Cheech Marin is consistently funny as a gun-toting priest that tapes confessions and drinks communal wine. And it’s about time somebody put an eye-patch on Michele Rodriguez, dressed her in black leather, and gave her a big fucking gun. What I missed however was a cameo by Quentin Tarantino. Ever since his stand-out role in “Planet Terror” as Rapist #1 I’ve had a renewed appreciation for his acting ability, at least in roles where he’s a psycho villain. It would have been cool if say, he played the Mexican/Samurai drug lord instead of Steven Segal, who didn’t do that hot of a job in this movie. Jessica Alba wasn’t very impressive either although she did have this one great line where she climbed a jalopy and proclaimed to a crowd of Mexican day laborers, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” Does that line make sense? Could this possibly be considered “good” writing? Maybe, maybe not. But she shouted it with such fervor and gusto that it was certainly entertaining to watch. It wasn’t boring.