Give Em Hell Malone, the low budget action-noir from director Russell Mulchay (Highlander, The Shadow) really has a hard-on for Sin City. This film wants to be created by Frank Miller so much, it hurts.
It's a hard boiled detective story that's set in the present day (they have mobiles n stuff) but has a 1930's sensibility (clothes, cars, attitude, dialogue). To further make the Frank Miller connection, it caricatures the noir genre...so the hitmen are unstoppable, the hitwomen are sexed up psychopaths, and the plot is dafter than a trouser full of weasels.
Thomas Jane is perfectly cast as gumshoe Molone, out to obtain the mysterious content of a briefcase (Pulp Fiction style). Elsa Patasky is stunningly sultry as the broad tangled up in the mystery, but also impossibly lacking in acting talent. Ving Rhames delivers trademark cool, while Doug Hutchinson, always a solid nutter (The Green Mile/Punisher War Zone) goes too far in the Heath Ledger Joker school of ham.
Flashy but cheap. Cool, but not an ice cold classic. Leave it to Frank Miller next time. And yes, that includes The Spirit.
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