Memoirs of a Board Gamer

-- SPOILERS -- (like you could actually spoil this movie...)

The movie, I suppose, is interesting from a clinical perspective. I can see breaking it down into it's most basic mechanical elements (lighting, cinematography, violence, blood, ...) and discussing the techniques. However, the movie pretty much Sucked. That's a capital 'S' by the way.

I would classify the movie as a melding of Kill Bill and Dick Tracy sprinkled liberally with Pulp[ed] Fiction but violent in a way that they could only dream of.

One of the story lines is of a 'good' cop (Bruce Willis) with a bad ticker who is after a demented rich boy who 'likes' young girls. Bruce haunts a black and white comic book world of bad guys, dime-store detective novel dialogue, and graphic violence. In another story line, a Dick Tracy-esque tough guy (crack-pot with a 'condition' who needs his medicine) goes on a killing spree trying to find out who killed his 'Goldie'...the only hooker to ever give him a chance.

Yet another story line is a fierce love affair between a hooker from Old Town (a female-controlled area where even cops don't enter) and a tough-guy, ledge jumping, two-timing pretty boy who gets caught up trying to keep his girlfriend (not the hooker from Old Town!) safe from a bad cop. You see, there's a long running truce between the bad cops, the mob, and the hookers. When this 'super cop' gone bad (the bad cop who was roughing up the pretty-boys girl) gets beheaded (almost) by a Kill Bill-ish Samurai hooker, well, all hell breaks loose. The bad cop ends up with a bobbing Pez Dispenser head that talks even though duct tape is over his mouth while two gang factions fight for control of his now severed head passing it around like it was a football except filled with a grenade.

The timelines are messed up a la Pulp Fiction and you get a good dose of white, red, and yellow(!) blood spurting onto just about every visible surface. Elijah Wood stretches his cinematic muscles as a strange boy-like canibalistic freak who lives in a farmhouse and has the uncanny ability to either move very quickly and/or become invisible. Nasty cannibalsesess-hobittesees . He seems very adept at evading the blows of Goldie's, nut-case and saw wielding lover while raining down cougar-like lacerations. Supposedly he has an angelic voice that we never hear even when his hungry sidekick wolf (who only gets the bones and scraps from his victims) gets to dine on the ends of his tourniquetted arms and leg stumps. Instead, Elijah just sits silently with a smile on his face.

That's just a summary and I'll leave out the really weird parts about a really stinky bright yellow guy with a rubbery gut and a penchant for making women scream. See, Stinky is after a young girl Bruce saved years ago (before prison) but she's all grown up now (19 yrs) and is putting the moves on Bruce after she recognizes him from the stage while performing a stripper/dance act.