I just got back from my preview screening, and this is the most gay Hollywood movie I've seen in a long time. It's essentially one huge conflict between butch gays and effeminate gays, with splotches of really lurid heterosexuality thrown in to keep the guys in the audience from giving each other handjobs as blood spatters fill the screen.
That said, it's all pretty cool. Not really a critic's movie -- there's not a lot of long-winded speeches, there's no 45 minutes of boring-ass downtime like in Gladiator, and there is lots and lots of brutal killing. The director is great, and this movie is the perfect remedy for people sick of the new Hollywood notion that you can't have a fight scene that contains less than 100 edits. There are lots of well choreographed long-takes of fighting, and you're never confused about who is doing what to whom. Not everyone will like the MTV-styled slo-mo, but I certainly do.
The CG blood-spattering is pretty nice, and really makes it feel like a comic book. Definitely better than the gratuitous real-life spattering of Kill Bill, since I don't think it induces as much laughter and doesn't feel as slapsticky.
Though I saw it for free, I'll probably pay to see it again. Thumbs Up.
